gridlore | Extremely weird dreams

I had trouble sleeping last night, due to some very strange dreams. There were two that I clearly remember.

The first was short. A cyclopean kitten, orange-white, sitting on what looked like a side walk. The perspective in the dream was almost ground level. The kitten yawns, and it's mouth gets wider and wider, and there is a crystal marble in its mouth. The kitten's mouth is huge, and the marble rolls out, directly towards my viewpoint. The kitten walks towards the marble, and in the crystal distortion, appears to have two eyes. It eats the marble again, and when finished, does in fact have two eyes.

The main feature is the one that kept me up all night.

I'm swimming in a large, indoor pool. It is very deep, but the water is pleasantly cool, and the lighting is very low, just enough for me seethe dark walls around the pool. I'm extremely buoyant, and my head isn't wet.

Note that I'm terrified of being in water where I can't see the bottom. In real life, I would have left a rooster tail of spray getting out of there.

I appear to be the only one there, but despite the calm environment, I am somewhat anxious to leave, but I don't know how. Suddenly, another man swims by. He is bald, with a large mustache, and is quite muscular. The only image I can link it with is circus strongman. I ask him if he knows where the shallow end is, and he says "take the stairs" and points to an archway that I had missed.

There is a fairly steep staircase, but it is waist deep in water! There are thousands of steps, but I climb effortlessly, even counting water resistance. The staircase is about 10 feet wide, with a railing up the middle, made of dark metal. The walls and ceiling are smooth stone, which has been painted and light tan. The stairs are lit by oil lamps, which give off an orange light. To either side of the wet stairs, there is a much narrow dry staircase, but somehow I know that I shouldn't try to take those.

Along the walls, every five feet or so, are alcoves, likes those for flower vases and small statues. But these have people.. scientists and philosophers. No engineers, just theoretical people. All of the are people I know I should recognized, even if I'm assigning them looks. They are all quite mad. All of them are laughing maniacally, and doing things, and shouting the same things repeatedly.

Among the notables..

Euclid, playing with a compass that was... wrong somehow. He was making it do strange things and he was shouting "New angles, more angles, old angles made new!"

Alfred Nobel, sitting waist deep in newspapers, reading them furiously, and muttering "still at it" before tossing the paper backing into the pile and grabbing another one.

Jan Oort peering intently into a coffee can, shaking it around a bit, then looking up and announcing to no one in particular "There isn't enough here! It must have settled during transit."

The others are getting fuzzy, hopefully Kiri will remember what I told her last night.

But there were two oddities.. one was the absence of Tesla. He's my scientific hero! If anybody deserves space in this hall it was him!

Then there was Marie Curie... unlike the others, she was in her alcove, sitting quietly, staring at the wall. As I approached, she slowly turned to me, and stated very gravely "I have completed my studies." and turned back to the wall.

She was one of two entities that spoke to me. The other was a London Bobbie, soon after Euclid. He was coming down the dry stairs, and leaned over to me, and whispered "It's the geometry that gets them." he then kept going down the stairs.

Finally, I reached the top and the shallow end. It was a gigantic European bathing pavilion, all iron lattice work and glass, and the pool was vast. Along the edges, people in Edwardian bathing costumes lounged about, sipping drinks or reading novels, and I could smell an amazing variety of foods. The warm was blood-warm, and the sun bright through the glass.

Somehow I knew that the scene was June, 1914. This whole beautiful scene would soon be destroyed.

That's when I woke up utterly terrified. Kirsten can attest that I was literally jumping at shadows. Then reason I've waited so long to write this is that I was afraid to open the door last night!

So, there you have it. Some of it is obvious, the long dream is a metaphor for human thought, but why was I so anxious to get out of the deep end? Where was everybody? Kirsten suggested that since I never looked down into the water, perhaps they were all in over their heads! What was the deal with the staircase? Why were all these people, whom I admire greatly, acting like lunatics on display? Who was the Bobbie? What did he mean? He wasn't referring to Euclid alone, it was everybody in there.

And the what the hell was up with M. Curie?!

Does it help to mention that Rose has been feeding me Tim Powers' novels? :)

Any theories, recommendations for good sanatoriums, etc.. would be appreciated.