i rarely recall my dreams.  often they fade to nothing after i wake so by mid-morning those dreams become like frames from a broken and burned piece of film.  but sometimes those dreams have a staying power of tremendous cinematic clarity.

i remember my dream from this morning.  i think it was influenced by watching a tom cruise sci-fi flick last night about earth invaded by alien organisms.  the special FX were spectacular.  cruise does his usual sci-fi hero thing pretty well.  the military hard-,and soft-, ware was both gritty and sleek.

then, again, as my friend alex gildzen has said in his poetry, life is a movie.  dreams are at least.

let me see if i can lineate the details.

the world is going to end by meteor strike in a few hours
we, me anna and nick and a number of unidentified people,
are traveling thru the u.s. in an RV
we, and everyone else, are calm about the end of the world
we are near the airport
a few people in our group are waiting the arrival of loved ones via passenger jet
i awake in the RV and i can't find my shoes
my shoes are in a big pile of unsorted clothes
i am asked to do a number of chores and favors for people
and i can't find the time to sort thru the clothes for my shoes
the plane filled with the loved ones is approaching the airport
one hour and some minutes to go before the meteor strike
we look at the plane flying overhead almost
then the plane does a large loop
the plane is too big to do a large loop
the plane stalls and in slowmotion falls to the ground and explodes on impact
i think the pilot committed suicide via aerial acrobatics
i worry that i will die without wearing my shoes

then i wake up.  i don't know what the dream means or why i feel it necessary to record it here.  dreams often do not make any sense but are a way for the brain to process varied images and thoughts.  sometimes they make sense, a little narrative, and sometimes they are a jumble of images and emotions.

but this dream has stuck with me all day.  i can still see that plane crash, and recall the sanguine moods of our traveling companions.  perhaps this dream is the result of my movie watching, my worries about the future of our planet, my own oddball obsession with apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic literature.  but it is was the calm of mine and my companions that remain with me.  this was not a nightmare.  it was a dream.  it was only a dream.