The Bridge
It is unfortunate the early sequences of this dream are forgotten, as they might have been helpful in interpreting the action in the remembered portions. This was a rather long dream, and a bit sprawling, but it was quite vivid and is easily remembered even now, eight years later (1-12-1983).
Before me was a large steel bridge with two traffic lanes on either side of a central divider. The divider was a low, narrow concrete island with a chain link fence down the middle of it, and a white line divided each of the lanes on either side. The bridge was a steel girder type of very heavy construction. It was of a strongly arched form, the road being quite steep here at the end. All the metalwork was painted silver. I was on the sidewalk on the far right.
A car that had been going in the opposite direction to my own movement stopped here, and some sort of altercation developed between myself and its occupants. I gathered from them I was being sought by someone, but do not remember what for. The occupants of the car were briefly distracted when another car swerved and went part way through the chain link center divider. I crossed over to the sidewalk on the left side of the bridge, and was there set upon by a group of teenage boys, whom I convinced I was not whoever it was they were looking for.
I entered a square spiral steel stairway descending from the bridge to the ground below. It was completely enclosed in chain link fence, and when I got to the bottom I found a gate with a special latch which could be opened only from the inside. Fortunately, that was the side I was on, so I opened it and stepped out. Looking back, I saw a small girl who had either followed me down, which seemed unlikely, or had been hiding under the stairs. I lifted her out and took her along a curving gravel road. She did not talk and was reluctant, so I left her in a box that was standing like a guard booth beside the road.
Continuing on my way, I found a a friend I recognized examining a bin of scrapped movie cameras. I examined them with him and found them to be small, black, and very flat, with a lens at one end, much like a military gunsight camera, but flatter than the ones I knew. I selected two of these to carry with me, thinking if I were pursued by an automobile I could drop a camera. The pursuers might think it contained what they were looking for and spend enough time recovering it for me to escape. I also removed several good lenses, put them in a cloth bag and hid them in a shelf box just inside a large warehouse building to retrieve later. The lenses were in several focal lengths, some still having a thick protective plastic film on them.
I continued on my way, carrying the two cameras and a cloth sack with some canned and boxed food. The sack was of a very coarse white fabric like burlap, but of soft cotton rather than the rough fiber burlap is generally made of. I soon came to the edge of a huge shallow embayment, quickly becoming a mud flat as the tide retreated. Many people were standing around near the guard rail at the edge, and I joined them for awhile. I climbed to the top of a very large cylindrical tank that rested on its side against the embankment were were at the top of. A few other people were sitting on the tank, watching something going on inland, but I do not remember what.
Looking out over the embayment, I could see some barges that had been unloaded into some kind of industrial structure down on the mud flat. They were being moved out into the bay before they were left stranded. The work of the barges was then taken over by a huge dump truck like vehicle so large it could wade through the receding water.
At this time I deliberately slid off the tank onto the newly exposed mud, still covered in places by large puddles of muddy, foamy water. I had abandoned the cameras but still had my sack, now soiled with brick red mud, as I myself was. A concerned person wearing rubber hip boots came up to me as I gathered myself together. I assured him I was all right and would be moving on. I slogged off into the water, now about hip deep, heading toward where the dump truck had been working.
The truck, which I intended to pass by, was stopped on the slope parallel to the structure. As the last of the water streamed down the slope, maintenance men cleared the now exposed roadway of the red and black mud and smoothed it. It was this roadway I headed for, but before I reached it, I was wetted further by a surge of water I recognized as the wash from a ship out on the bay. I passed the truck and the road maintenance men withought incident, but was challenged by another man wearing rubber hip boots, asking me what I was doing there. I motioned to my sack and told him my groceries had slid off the tank so I had followed them down to retrieve them. Now that I was already wet and muddy, I was just going to cross the entire mud flat to the apartments across the way, which I pointed to.
About a quarter of a mile away was a low ledge beyond which the city started. I could see a mixture of old red brick buildings in a somewhat Victorian style, interspaced with modern apartment buildings about four stories high. The whole area included many tall trees, a very attractive scene, especially when contrasted to the mud and water separating me from there.
The man in the boots accepted my explanation and approved my plan, so I was about to continue on my way when I noticed the train. The tracks ran on a very low ledge right below the higher ledge on which the city was built. A freight train was now passing, which seemed to stretch from horizon to horizon. "Wow! Now that's a fuckin' train" I exclaimed. The man in the boots agreed and said one like it went by every day about this time.
I set off on my way, the train finally passing before I got to the tracks. I climbed the shallow embankment to the cinder roadbed and looked down the tracks, but there were no trains in sight. I crossed over and climbed the higher embankment to where the houses were. I came immediately to a two story red brick house with a narrow ledge around it. It was surrounded on this side by a stair well with stairs at each end.
Rather than going to the nearest stairs, I grasped the guard rail and heaved my muddy person over, dropping to the bottom of the well. It was my intention to walk around to the other side and climb the stairs at the other end of the well. I then intended to go a block or two into the apartment area where I apparently could find a place to stay, but wondered if anyone would be suspicious of me on the way due to my muddy condition. I still had no idea why I was being looked for or even if it was really me they wanted, or if the people at the bridge had been mistaken. I wanted to take no chances (see Note).
At this time, my alarm went off, which at first I interpreted as a noise
coming from my sack and I worried that the noise would attract attention.
I tried to find the source in the sack, but quickly realized what it was
and that no-one else would hear it. I then departed from the dream and
turned the thing off. Quickly realizing I could not return to the dream,
I concentrated on remembering it in detail.
End.
I haven't used an alarm clock for many years now, so this kind of event no longer occurs.
As I began typing this dream, the image of a bridge in another dream appeared to me quite vividly, a very long narrow metal bridge over a very wide but very shallow river. The rocky bottom was clearly visible through the clear water. The bridge was very high, supported by concrete pylons spaced quite far apart. I could call up scenes both while on the bridge and while along the shore below it, but the point of the action escapes me.
This is very interesting as the scenes are fairly vivid, yet this dream, which feels quite old, has never occurred to me before, and may not have been remembered upon waking. Days later, as I proof read this sequence, I can call up the images of this bridge and its river, but the recall is now descriptive rather than participative as the initial recall was.
Note: The paragraph where I say I did not know why I was being looked for needs a bit of explanation. In a dream that is remembered, it is not possible to be completely immersed in the dream personality, so the past memory of the dream personality is unavailable to the waking personality. The dream body is inhabited by two consciousnesses not completely integrated, a kind of schizophrenic situation. If the personalities were completely integrated it would not be possible to bring any memory whatever back to the waking state.
It is probable the same situation can exist between the waking state and whatever level of consciousness supersedes it. In either case, it would be difficult for the lower state personality to detect if and when it was partially overlaid by the higher personality. Any action taken by the higher personality would normally take place through the integrated portion and would be perceived by the lower personality as its own action.
10-27-2022 Immediately upon starting to type this dream into html format, I knew about the square caged stairs to the ground. The double staircase was also quite familiar, though not thought of in advance. The bridge in the supplemental paragraph I could also visualize fairly well.