Earlier this week I woke up from the most dystopian dream I've had so far.
It started pretty cool. Me and a group of people I no longer remember were walking around the outskirts of a city, on a sandy area that was either desert or beach, when we came across a large, empty canal cut out in the sand. It had flat, sloping edges, and a flat bottom, all polished and straight, leading out towards the ocean where the excavators were just about to clear the final stretch to the water, and have it all come rushing in.
I imagined being at the bottom of that canal, and drawing that canal, with sketchy and slating lines to really capture the edges, and then came the water. Instantly the ocean swept its way in; filling it with water. I was surfing on the waves. I followed the rise. I witnessed the water first-person as it claimed the bay.
It turned out this was all a part of filming a new music video for Eminem, and the canal wasn't the biggest part, but more importantly the gigantic mountain of sand that towered behind it, rising to the left of the canal like skyscrapers of a city. The contours of the sand wall weren't obvious at first, but when they said it was supposed to look like the back end of a Chevrolet we could see it clearly. The lightning shifted. It looked like a rusty icon dredged down into the sand, lost to the decades that'd passed before it.
And behind this sand wall there was actually a city, with colorful lights and flickering neon. It was night, but it was bright. We walked along the aisles (because they really were more like aisles than regular streets and sidewalks), and looked up at the lit skies with awe.
Then it was time to go back, and this is where the dystopia started. The sky was once again that of an early morning with thin clouds filtering the sunlight, and we crossed a bridge to get home.
I didn't remember that bridge being there before.
At the highest point there was an intersection, with the crossing road leading straight into a wall of rubble, and we saw excavators or bulldozers shoving around large rocks below in a landfill of gigantic proportions, a field of stones and pitfalls deep below us, so large it'd be impossible to cross, and impossible to climb without the stones tumbling down on you.
It was like the excavators kept the field alive: a deceptive stretch of living stones just waiting to crush and bury you. A set of guards waited on the bridge, and I don't remember why but at first they wouldn't let us through.
But then they did, and I ran home, past this barren land, and embarked onto a forest road that slithered by a river, with dry autumn-like grass and leafless trees shimmering in the sun, the water running wild beside me.
Eventually the road became flooded, and I didn't want to go any further with my regular shoes, so I ran back again, thinking about how different the world was as soon you managed to get outside the s city. The divide was instantaneous as soon as you went down from the bridge and came into the forest. The light. The colors.
Everything was vibrant and full of life, and it might not sound like it, but that intersecting bridge was the heaviest notion of future dystopia I've ever been in. As I stood by the guard post I felt caged like I don't think I ever have in real life.
But then I was out, back in the wild, and I'm sure there was a bit more to my dream, like this fight with police I have some vague memory of (it ended with them letting me out, asking if I'd had some time to think about what I did, and I just said yes, the police are my enemy now, that's it
).
Then I woke up to frosty landscapes and a warm winter sun.
Life's not so bad after all.
