This night's dream started out with me walking some kids home (to my place) from the main road, the same way I used to walk from the school bus every day. I was going to baby sit these kids for the day, and they're from the kindergarten where I work. As I grabbed their hands - there were three of them, and the oldest didn't need to hold my hand - a woman also working there stopped her car and told me a kid had been killed earlier, and I had to be careful with the ones I was babysitting. I said I would be, and she drove her car to my house and was coming to meet me half-way (why she didn't just drive the kids in the first place, I'll never know) to help me out.
When we got to the railway crossing between the main road and our house, I looked both ways carefully and started to cross. But the oldest kid refused. I conveniently had some ice cream in my purse (as you do!), and bribed him with it. He insisted on eating it before he crossed, and I let him. While we were standing there, a train passed. It slowed down to a halt (reminding me way too much of the time when the DART (Dublin Area Rapid Train) hit and killed a man when I lived in Blackrock last year). We had to cross the railway behind the train, and one of the kids (a 2-year-old) thought it was hilarious. He started playing behind the train! Suddenly the train started moving backwards, and I grabbed him and threw him over to the other side. I grabbed the other two kids as well, and made sure they crossed safely with me. The woman arrived with another little girl on a tall, bay horse. The woman told me the girl was terrified, and we needed to get her back into the stable.
I handed her the other kids, and entered a stable with the girl. But as we entered, she disappeared. The stable turned out to be a clothing shop, where I was told I needed riding pants and a show jacket. I didn't understand why, but I grabbed what they handed to me and entered a changing room. But the changing room was actually a door into a horse show area. Suddenly I was wearing the clothes I was supposed to be trying on, and I was on my way to the stables. The little girl entered on the tall horse, and she still looked terrified. She fell off the horse, and people ran to her to help. I noticed the cute assistant handyman from the kindergarten enter a different stable-looking building (and totally forgot the poor girl, haha!), and I entered it from a different door, because I really wanted to see him again (he no longer works in the kindergarten, sadly). But it turned out to be a club house for the rich kids, and they looked at me as if I were insane to enter. However, I kept looking for that guy, and thought I'd found him, but he turned out to be someone else. I apologised and walked out the other door, and into a sort of carnival area. But there were no kids there, only adults doing strange things. Some of them were running around naked!
Tony Soprano was there! He was sliding down a rope, and he was naked too. Naked! Down a rope! He half-smiled humorously at me, and I heard myself say "Ouch, that's gotta burn!" and he laughed. I felt he expected me to say something else, so I continued "Or maybe no more than usual?", indicating he's got an STD. He laughed even harder, nudged the person hanging in the rope next to him, and pointed at me. I was very pleased with myself, at least as long as I was pretty safe on the ground (it would take him a while, and a terribly rope burn, to get to me.
Anyway, I kept walking over to a tent, where they had birds. A sign said "Corvidae", and there were two species of the crow family in there. One was magpies, and the other looked like jackdaws, but with a curious teint of beautiful green to their feathers. I got so fascinated by them I stopped to look, and suddenly they were all over me. They felt like dragonflies and mosquitoes against my skin, and I somehow panicked. A woman laughed and helped me out of the tent.
I came out a different side than I had entered, and came into a backstage area. Suddenly I was wearing a beautiful dress the same shade of green as had been in the those birds' feathers... I had this weird feeling (also called "paranoia") that Tony Soprano was behind all this, because of the way I had talked to him. I didn't think he wanted to kill me or anything, but maybe scare me a little, just for fun. I remembered he'd been laughing, so it couldn't have been too bad. Actually I found I was a little excited by the idea that he was looking for me, and maybe even arranging all of this just to get to me. Okay, maybe "paranoia" could be replaced by "annoyingly full of myself"... Anyway, I was told I was one of the models who had to walk down a flight of stairs, walk in front of a lot of people, and then up another flight of stairs. I was not allowed to look at the audience at all, and I was supposed to read all the signs at the side of the route, because they were put there as hints. They were changed for each of the "models", so it was important we took our assigned turn. However, no one was telling us which turn was ours, and we had to figure it out ourselves, from hints on a note card. I looked around for the card and found Rory Gilmore (!) holding it. I got really excited - after all, it was Rory Gilmore, and she's on TV! (it would've made more sense if it was Alexis Bledel, but in my head, Rory was a real person, AND on TV... go figure) - and walked up to her. She read the next hint out loud (the show had already started), and the cue to which colour dress was next had something to do with "the sea". I was wearing a green dress, remember, and it was the colour of some sort of sea bird. The way it reflected the light looked like sun reflected on water, so it could've been me. But Rory was wearing the only blue dress, so we were really unsure. Finally we decided it was my turn, and I walked through the curtains and found the stairs.
I was more nervous about it maybe not being my turn, than about the audience, or about tripping and falling. I don't remember what kind of shoes I was wearing by the way, but at least I had no trouble walking in them. The first hint had something to do with a surprise for my birthday - and since my birthday is on Saturday, I kind of felt sure it was my turn, and I relaxed a little. I looked up for the next sign, and saw Tony Soprano sitting a little way down the stairs, right next to my route. I could see him see me through the corner of his eye, and he had that mysterious half smile he'd had earlier, which scared and excited me. I saw his hand reach out toward the woman sitting in front of him, and watched him undo the top button of her blouse, which had the buttons in the back. She didnt even notice it, he was so careful. Then he looked mischievously at me, and I felt he was trying to tell me something. I didn't understand what...
Then I remembered I wasn't allowed to look at the audience. I walked on, trying to find more signs. I don't remember if I saw anymore of them. But I do remember feeling Tony's eyes on me as I walked away from him, and kind of felt him smiling. All making me feel even more sure that this was something he had arranged. Not the whole set-up, but me suddenly entering it.
I'd been told that no matter what happened, I should keep on walking, ignoring even the strangest things. So when a group of men walked towards me on my route, as I entered floor level, I ignored them. They had bullet-proof wests that said FBI, but I decided it had to be just part of the show, so I kept walking. At floor level the audience were sitting at tables, and the names of the reservations were visible. One sign said "Soprano", and the feds noticed it just as I did. Tony obviously wasn't sitting at the table, as I'd seen him in a different seat earlier, but I recognised Junior (his uncle, in case you haven't seen The Sopranos). The feds rushed the people at the table up from their seats, asked them questions and pushed them back down. They obviously didn't find who or what they were looking for. For some reason I panicked on behalf of Tony, and as I started climbing the other set of stairs, I stole a glance in his direction. He was gone.
I looked up at the top of the stairs, and suddenly knew he was waiting for me up there. Almost at the top of the stairs was my final hint. The sign read "Rage, rage against the dying of the light" in big letters. That's when I woke up...
~
Those words of the final hint are from a poem by Dylan Thomas, and it's encouraging the reader to not give in to death.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
I find this a little bit scary. But then again, Dylan Thomas is one of my favourite poets, so it's not like it's taken completely out of the blue. The rest of the dream (from the carnival area onwards) feels strangely symbolic as well. I wish I could understand it...
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