A falling dream...

I had a very strange dream today, one of such blatant symbolism that I feel I just must inflict the random images upon the world. I was travelling to a place I had never been, a place that seemed otherworldly or futuristic. All humans had retreated under the ground, building their cities below the crust of the Earth. The city we were driving around--we being I don't remember who, other than someone's grandparents were there, not mine but somebody's--was built on either side of a thin but deep crevice. There were roads going back and forth between different sections of this city along narrow, two-lane bridges with no railings. The world just dropped off into distant mist off the shoulder of the road. Think of Indian Jones and the Last Crusade, where he make the "leap of faith" over the bottomless valley and you will have an idea of what I mean. The gap, however, was slightly wider.

We had travelled back and forth along these bridges and we were on some kind of roadtrip. I know because I was reading a book like I often do on such trips, a thick paperback book. I am talking about an epic--the spine was 3 inches thick. For some strange reason, the car then was gone. I was/we were then on foot somewhere along the edge of this crevice, looking down upon the bridges spanning the bottomless depths and I felt very attached to this book. I couldn't lose it, I knew, though why, I didn't. Naturally, I began to fall and my heart was beating very fast.

Something caught me, though. I was holding onto something, somehow that was preventing my fall. I looked up to find it was the book. I was holding onto either cover and the open pages had caught on a cable or wire that crossed the chasm. Still not out of danger--I was dangling, unable to get back up to the ground I had been standing on--I held onto that book and looked down at my feet. I was wearing a plaid skirt.

Literature as my salvation. Literature as a delicate salvation--not a hard-cover but a flimsy novel that could tear, leaving me to tear off into the depths, my scream becoming softer and more frantic as I fall out of sight. But, I was caught nonetheless.