Intense, strange dream last night (or this morning, technically) right before I woke up.
The beginnings of it are hazy. I know that I was exploring some tall building somewhere (I don't think I was myself, but some other character at this point), and one thing that sticks out vividly in my memory is getting into an elevator that, half-way down, went into free-fall. An automated female voice came on over the speakers to calmly inform the passengers (of which I was the only one at that point) to pry open the doors of the elevator as it began to turn and roll onto its back as it fell (so that the doors would be facing up) and be ready to jump upwards just as the elevator hit the bottom of the shaft. Supposedly, this would help minimize the impact somehow - but since I was in a free-falling elevator and had no real choice, I followed the instructions, and somehow it worked, almost as though the bottom of the shaft was cushioned to absorb the elevator box without it smashing apart, while some kind of forcefield was in place to catch and suspend me just as I jumped so that my momentum was slowed and I was able to sort of "swim" towards the opening that was about ten feet up from the bottom of the shaft.
I spent some more time wandering around in the dream, which is now half-forgotten. Somewhere along the way, I met up with other people and the dream became a Volunteer Naturalist training class with Penny and Anne leading us. Once again, I found myself inside the elevator, only this time with a group of people, when it went into free-fall and the same automated voice gave instructions. I had my doubts about how it would work with all of us trying to squeeze through the door and jump at the same time, but somehow it did.
I found myself then heading out of the tall building with everyone and at that point I could see from the outside that it was the Space Needle (although inside it was much more like an office building with multiple rooms and hallways on each floor and the elevator on the inside, not the outside, of the building). Instead of being at the City Center downtown surrounded by concrete and other buildings, the Space Needle was standing in the midst of a huge, grassy field that stretched out on all sides with trees lining the field off in the distance. Some of the SVNs were talking with Penny about the next bit of training for the class, and she was joking about how it would involve capturing, killing and dissecting an animal. I think everyone was a bit horrified at the thought - since these are folks who signed up to protect the wildlife in the parks, not hunt it - but several of the people were trying to put on a brave face for the sake of the training, since they signed a contract at the beginning saying they would complete the training and donate their time to teach afterwards. I made some brief joke, but then said in all seriousness I didn't plan to kill or dissect anything regardless of what I'd signed. I got the impression that that was the right response that Penny had been going for, but she didn't say anything right then.
It must have been our lunch break at that point, because we all wandered off into the field beneath the Space Needle to settle down for a break while Penny and Anne talked together and prepared for the next bit of the training. While we were gathered there in the grass, a show began on the lawn surrounding the Space Needle - like a Cirque du Soleil, except that the performers were giants. They were varying heights, with the shortest group of them being maybe ten feet tall, and the tallest being closer to fifty or sixty feet. They were dressed in all sorts of amazing, intricate costumes - predominating among a certain group of tall, skinny giants about 12 to 14 feet tall with outfits of silk scarves and long draped robes of oranges and reds, with painted faces - and they performed acrobatics and synchronized interpretive dance around the base of the Space Needle almost as though it were some sort of maypole. The performers were of all different skin colors, and one woman in particular with dark skin and the most beautiful dreadlocks seemed to be a kind of goddess-giant moving in an amazing dance of agility - you could see her muscles flexing and her sweat that made her skin glisten along with the glittery body paint she wore. Others around her were of all skin tones, but mostly tall and skinny (though not taller than she was), and there were... littler giants (?) of only about ten feet tall who were in usual human proportions like she was, except bigger.
They performed their acrobatics and dancing around the Space Needle for a while as more and more people gathered in a huge circle on the lawn to watch them, groups of us sitting in clumps here and there, not all of them for the SVN training, but strangers as well who'd been passing by and come to watch. The performers began bringing people in from the audience and the act transformed into a kind of spiritual healing session in which - what might be called "faery darts" but were more like "faery bullets" were shot through people, piercing them and supposedly severing the binds of illness or pain within them. One man eagerly volunteered and dragged his young son into the circle as well, having the boy stand behind him to be pierced by the same invisible arrow/bullet of energy. This struck me as dangerous and unwise, and I began to have a visceral negative reaction to what was going on. Another woman who got up to be healed (or was called up by name, as I think the performers had begun to do) had cataracts over her eyes - when they flung the dart/bullet at her, she collapsed unconscious to the ground. As she regained consciousness, her cataracts began to clear from her eyes, and they told her that what had been causing them was some kind of sickness in her brain that had migrated to the back, to the nape of her neck, where it was now bulging out in some kind of pussy blister or tumor that needed to be lanced and released. But she began to lose consciousness again, and again I felt like what was going on was not okay and wasn't actually helping anyone.
At that point, I noticed odd-shaped white objects in the sky above us, and when I looked closer, I realized they were spinning, open-air discs that were falling from the top of the Space Needle sort of like whirligigs or horizontal pinwheels, or seeds that were riding on the wind. At first, they looked beautiful and amazing - but as they got closer, I realized just how big they were and that they were not actually attached to anything by a cable or guide, so they really were in a free-fall and would land wherever the wind took them. I panicked at this point, seeing these massive wheels of metal whirling down towards where we were on the ground - but everyone else seemed to take it in stride, so I tried to quell my panic. Sure enough, the wheels not only did not crash into one another on their way down (for there were maybe ten or fifteen of them all together), but they all rolled and landed neatly in the grass without landing on either the performers or the audience gathered. As they landed and rolled to a stop, I saw that inside them were people (strapped in with their feet to the edges and their backs against the top of the disc, so that as the discs came to a stop, they were somewhat horizontal with their faces towards the ground) who'd use the whirligig discs as a kind of conveyance-slash-amusement park ride to get down from the top of the Space Needle.
At this point in the dream, I got up and switched where I was sitting, moving to the other side of the group where people I knew were talking. The energy there suddenly seemed to be lighter and the free-floating panic I'd been feeling about various things evaporated as someone made a joke that sent me laughing heartily at something. With the laughter came a great release of tension and I felt so happy to be there, hanging out with friends. Just as the dream was ending, I glanced up and saw A* sitting nearby on the other side of a few people - we made eye-contact briefly, and in that moment it was like I could see his thoughts going that he was both pleased to see me laughing but also confused and somewhat envious that I was off laughing with others, whereas he felt overly awkward and so was only ever very quiet around me. (In retrospect this reminds me of that Ani DiFranco song when she says, "I like you so much I talk to everyone but you.") In the dream, the feeling was certainly mutual and I too felt awkward around him to be able to joke and laugh freely - yet felt that giddy excitement at making eye-contact with him.
* I really need to stop watching this TV show, if A is going to be showing up randomly in my dreams. ::embarrassed::
