weird ferry dreams

I’ve had a couple of dreams lately where I’ve been able to remember a few details, sometimes even when I’d be better off not remembering.

In one I was kayaking, something I’ve never done because water kind of terrifies me, especially the large oceany type you can drown in. In this dream I was quite comfortable with it as I and two others (I can’t recall who they were, alas) paddled along the coastline. At one point we ended up on a ferry and any dream I have that features a ferry never ends well. In this one we were planning to leave the ferry in our kayaks while the boat was still sailing. One of us then floated (ho ho) the notion that we could leave after the ship docked, so it all ended unusually well.

The other dream was one I woke up from this morning and as befits a Monday morning dream, it was quietly horrible.

In it I was back working as the operator at the concession, the kind of employment I relish the same way a mouse would anticipate an evening with a hungry cat. Various employees were doing various tasks while I took it upon myself to manage the inventory. This seemed to consist primarily of sorting and placing very tiny packets of something edible (looking back on the dream now I haven’t the faintest idea what these might have been) into very long slatted wooden shelving units. The work was fantastically tedious and involved. The whole dream had a terrible dreariness to it and I woke up feeling kind of depressed. Then it was off to actual real work, my mood ashen gray.

I’d next like to have a dream where I win the lottery or something and it’s not one of those ironically nightmarish things like an episode of The Twilight Zone.

There have been two recurring themes in dreams I’ve had since I was a wee one. The first was being chased by something — mummies, vampires, mean robots but most often vehicles and in true Killdozer style, the vehicles would always be driver-free. Two I recall vividly were a muscle car from the late 60s/early 70s that chased me down a neighbor’s driveway (I escaped by leaping onto the branch of a tree that hung over the end of the driveway), the other a giant-sized dump truck with the front bumper missing, which made it much scarier.

The chase dreams pretty much ended as an adult.

The other theme has been ferry disasters, which I’ve talked about before. Last night I had one of these dreams and as with most of them, it wasn’t really scary, just weird. I don’t recall who I was with but we were on the ferry and as usual, something goes wrong. This time it seemed like some kind of stability issue, which we noticed when the ferry began lurching to the side so severely as to nearly touch water to the passenger deck. Then, while still motoring along, the ship does not one but two complete barrel rolls. Yes, it capsizes twice. But it manages to right itself and we were apparently wearing our capsizing boots and were none the worse for the spinning. But now it was clear the ferry had to get to the terminal and dock ASAP.

The ferry starts racing along through the water and is kind of wobbly, pitching a bit from side to side. At some point I move to the front lounge for a better view ahead and we are entering a winding river-like area that doesn’t actually exist. Perhaps because of the ferry’s excessive speed, instead of attempting to navigate the serpentine path, the captain has the crew shovel more coal into the boiler and guns it toward a giant pile of smoothly-shaped rocks. Maybe it was a hill covered with rocks. Whatever it was, it was clear we were going to jump it.

The ferry hits the hill and scoots up it and out of the water, then flies off the top and soars like a wingless bird. For a few moments as the ship flies through the air we ponder what the landing will be like. But not to worry — the ferry lands upright and everyone’s okay. But not! Because the terminal is dead ahead and the ship is going way too fast! The engines are put into full reverse and the water churns furiously as we speed toward the dock. The ship slows, slows some more and then finally eases into the dock as if this was the end of a perfectly normal trip. Roll credits.