Me, My Prussian Blues (and That Guy With the Horns)

The air smolders with sorrow. Panic glimmers on the faces of those I do not know, and around me they swarm and shout and cry. I hear them very clearly; their voices are grey and forlorn, and I wish they'd go away. Consciously, I notice that I cannot feel my feet: my shoes are not touching the peeling linoleum I see beneath them.

The numbness is terrifying, and at first I wonder if that is why all of these people are running around. But no, they have something else on their minds. I am standing on the dirty floor of one of my classrooms in my dreadful old middle school. It is the English classroom. In this very room, Mrs. Phil had a seizure in the middle of class and called an ambulance before staggering out. It was in this room I had decided how much I hated humanity and its malapert language.
The movement of my eyes seeming oddly sluggish, I tried to find the source of their fear. Why were all these people running in and out of Room 401?

I finally noticed the tree. It was colorless, odorless, and more despondent than the cries of the classmates I couldn't recognize. The timeless oak had fallen through the three-story window, silent and grim. But there was more to this fear than the broken, ancient giant. Outside, the sky was as grey as the eyes of the stony Thinker. No, even Roden had never seen such grey. It was like looking into a world composed of feathered ash. I couldn't see much but broken sectors of sky because the bulk of the oak blocked the rest, but there were tremors in the air that told me of a storm raging outside. I wouldn't've wanted to see the rest, anyway. No wonder they ran.

On further inspection, the chaos of Room 401 was actually attempted order. Unrecognizable men and teenagers would run in and snatch containers from boxes of canned food in the corner, partly obscured by the oak's branches. While they gathered this food, others less conscious would run in simply to wail or push over the remaining desks.

I finally notice a boy motioning frantically, standing right in front of me. Something stirred inside my clouded head and spoke of some familiarity with this boy. But what did he want? Looking back, I realize he had no face, no recognizable features. I couldn't grasp any kind of logic from his flailing and dulled shouting, but again something sent me a muffled wave of comprehension. He wanted me to help bring the canned food out of 401 and into the school.

I tried to walk, but after the first numb step the floor seemed to shift under my feet, moving me towards the boxes of cans. All the rushing people seemed to fall away towards the other end of the room as if the school was being tilted by some curious entity. Like a box whose contents are unknown is shaken.

I wanted so much to reach those cans... but the floor shifted again and I was at the front of the classroom. Directly before me was the chalkboard, where old grammar lessons still leered at me, faded by age and hate. And carved into the surface with pink chalk in this ashy grey world, front and center staring me in the face, were the words: "I wish we had more chalkboards, too."

And I can only remember the taste of rain as the fog in my head finally leaked out my eyes and mouth, and made everything grey disappear.

~|~

The world is lit with a soft but eerie silence. Here, the first thing I notice is the lack of sound. There are no animals and no planes, no crickets or clouds. Everything is clear and quiet. I breathe deeply as I could not before, in Room 401. The sky is too translucent to be blue, and too tangible not to exist. I am reminded of fifth grade art class when we made marble designs on paper with special oil paints of pastel colors.

In this world, the air is sweet and light. Around me, I notice trees. These trees are so tall that I cannot be bothered to look up to see their foliage even though I saw the sky just moments before. The trunks are white as bone, and have no breath. The smooth bark is dusty, and smells like something antique.

Strangely, the last thing I notice is that I am knee-deep in water. The entire area is flooded so that the roots of the trees are not visible, nor is there any vegetation on the ground. Nothing floats in the water. Looking at it, the liquid is as clear as spring's rain; but I can see nothing but the marbled sky in its reflection; not what's underneath. Again I am deprived of feeling or seeing my feet. The water laps at my legs but I cannot feel its moisture.

By just breathing, I know that the water is sweet and cool. I am reminded at this point of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis; how the sea that marks the end of the world is sweet mineral water and hardly waist-deep.

I started walking on what was probably once a clearly marked path but was now just flood land lacking the ashen trees. I wonder at the silence, how the water ripples at my movements but makes no noise.

It takes the frailty of a single conscious thought in this sweet, dead world to realize that strangers have joined me on my trek. Strangely, the thought vaguely resembled: Where are all the goats?

There are a number of people with me now; seven or nine, I think. I would say they were slightly older than me, but I didn't know how old I was.
Again, I can't recognize them, but they are familiar. I distinctly remember a girl with eight fingers and a black boy with goggle-like glasses on.

We were like some kind of lonely fellowship, content with our survival but not bothered to acknowledge it. And we aren't lost. No, we had a reckless purpose that made us run through the soundless waters and brush our fingertips against the antique and bone-like reapers.

They communicated with me, with no words or eyes, just thought.

When invisible granite rock finds the soles of our feet, we stop. Now, a silent waterfall ends the flooded plain. Hanging on the trees, leaning precariously out over the falls, we scan the ruined landscape. The waterfall descends without current, placidly to where it hits land without noise. I can't see where it lands, though; it is so far down. We can only see the world stretching out before us, completely flooded with the same sweet death. It's like looking at a marble sky flecked with rock and tree. There are low mountains in the distance, but I am so high up that they barely scar the horizon.

Knee-deep in the world's clearest water, but unable to see beyond its opaque surface, a word rises to mind, passing my companions lips without sound: Tokugawa.

And if I listen hard enough, there is the ticking of a clock with a stone face.

-

When one dreams, they are in a period of sleep called rapid eye movement, or REM sleep. During REM, our brain is as active as it is in waking hours, but our bodies are paralyzed due to atonia, which doesn't allow the motor neurons that control our muscles in our brains to work. This is the deepest and most restful sleep. It's too bad we hardly get over 20 minutes of it every night.

Mostly you spend your nights in non-REM sleep; restless, half-awake, dreading the morning.

The reason we dream is still unclear in science. My mother says our dreams are a reflection of our brain working to sort away all the memories of the day. Some scientists say that REM sleep is a period of development for the brain. They attribute this to evidence showing that the amount of REM sleep we get each night decreases with age.

I googled it.

The first two sites listed were dream interpretation sites.

Apparently the calm flood symbolizes power over others with strong opinion, while the water itself could mean rejuvenation. The clarity of the water points to serenity and calm. The trees represent longevity and power and strength. To see strangers in your dream is supposed to represent the part of yourself that is repressed and hidden. I'll hate to break it to all of my friends, but I am secretly a black man with poor eyesight.
To see something written in chalk, apparently, signifies "something that can easily escape your grasp." It is suggested to consider the significance of the message written. Well, I have been missing the presence of chalkboards in schools these days...but how is that important, the way the world is?

The Tokugawa dream was the night of Tuesday, the 13th of April. This was the day before an H. Biology quiz and two days before we won our first home lacrosse game on the 15th, seven to one. It doesn't seem significant.

Continuing to scroll down the Google webpage, the most interesting thing was a link that read "Dreams (1990)": a movie title. Looking at the brief description Google offered me, I saw that the film was directed by none other than Akira Kurosawa. Creepy, right?
Well, maybe a little bit. This famous Japanese director was one of the topics for our Japanese research project in the ever time-consuming Asia class. The same class that taught me of the Tokugawa period, also of Japan. This director had made a movie on his own dreams. I wonder if any of them were about Tokugawa.

Thinking of Tokugawa and the flood, I was reminded of a poster I have in my room. It depicts a dusky blue wave rising above fishing boats. In the distance is the snow-capped peak of Mount Fuji being dwarfed by a dismal parchment sky. I know this to be the Great Wave of Kanagawa, painted by Hokusai as a woodblock print in 1831.

Dreams are so odd. Most people experience all kinds of illusions in their sleep: healing dreams, prophetic dreams, nightmares... So why are all my dreams just little versions of the end?