The Journey of Dichotomy

MORNING OF OCTOBER 19, 2008

These dreams were had during a camping trip with friends (as I'd intermittently wake up, freezing cold, and then drift back to sleep). Most all of the dreams I recall had something to do with the actual group I was camping with and I doing things together, and this held true for this, the final dream.

All five us us were out walking in the middle of a cold night, only we left the woods and ended up on a busy highway. There were supposed to be three lanes of traffic all going the same direction. However, the leftmost lane was going one way, the rightmost the other, and the middle lane is where we were walking (there were no other apparent pedestrians). I was aware of how dangerous a position we were in to keep walking here.

I think a car in the leftmost lane had broken down and there was a lot of congestion there. Even though we were actually walking this road in a perfectly natural fashion, I frequently could see a bird's eye view of the traffic.

At one point the road turned into what looked like a subway terminal. As we made our way up a small flight of stairs within the station, I observed a crowd of people descending a flight of stairs to the opposite side. One guy, seemingly drunk, suddenly ran up, shouting for everyone to "Watch me!", and he tried to jump down the stairs. Naturally this only led to him falling down said stairs, and knocking down a few of the people who had been on them at the time of his heroic jump. It looked pretty painful, but I don't think anyone was severely hurt.

Eventually my group made its way out of the subway terminal onto a large, grassy lawn. It was now early morning. There was a military boot camp of some sort to one side. As we passed it, C. observed that it was about time for them to be doing their daily training, and shortly thereafter we saw them doing just that.

There were other people sparsely populating the huge lawn as we walked, each going about their own business. It was more or less like a park, except for being entirely devoid of trees, shrubbery, benches, or any sort of real scenery or landscaping. Suddenly we came upon two young, blonde girls, apparently twins of about 9 years of age. One was pulling the other in a red wagon. The wagon passenger was actually bound with ropes. If this distressed her, she conveyed no emotion to depict it (or to convey any feeling at all, for that matter).

The older sister just pulled the younger one around in that wagon, in a quiet and purposeful way, all up and down the lawn. It was actually a little disturbing. Then, the dream sort of changed to where it was a puppy instead of a little girl in the wagon. The other girl began to torment the puppy in some fashion, and several grown-ups in the park (including our group) went to scold her and put a stop to it.

One man had a pocket knife, and he used it to cut the ropes and free the puppy from the little girl. I felt relieved as it ran from her. The girl, however, was letting the man (and anyone nearby) know exactly how displeased she was with the situation.

Then it's like I was playing a video game on the Wii, and there were "Mii" characters of the two little girls in the wagon, and your goal was to send them around from place to place...highly odd.

NOTE: A friend later pointed out the symbolism of dichotomy that runs rampant throughout this dream...the traffic running in opposing directions on either side, the stairs going up and down in the subway terminal, the twin girls, one leading and tormenting the helpless other, etc. Interesting.