Dreamscapes: Curtained Concrete
People say dreams are meant to be an interpretation of how your brain sees the world rather than how your eyes see it. The way a place appears in your eyes is sometimes different from how it appears in your dreams because your brain sees the place differently from its actual design.
There have been many times in my dreams when my house looks as it does now. There are times when it looks like an oversized advent calendar with a cartoony jack-in-the-box clock shooting out at me as I tap the bell against the door. There are times when it is the width of a school desk and the length of a hallway in a faeri spy movie.
This dream encapsulates my mind’s interpretation of downtown Yonindale and the act of taking the train. I call this dream: “Curtained Concrete”.
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I am walking around what my brain knows to be downtown Yonindale, but everything seems to be under construction. It’s an elongated construction zone that spans every inch of the city I walk. Mirages of wooden beams, high concrete walls, and hanging wires greet me down a claustrophobic alleyway.
As I walk, the general lighting changes between the warmth of the wood, creating a pseudo sunset rushing through the haze of the alley, and the cool, paleness of the concrete sucking the soul from the alley.
I suddenly reach a furnished subway station. It sticks out due to the general clearing around the area and its glass-based exterior. It resembles a bus lot. I head there as my brain gives me directions to go home.
I see some old friends. Their faces are blurred and yet clear enough for me to recognise them. We talk with one another as we walk down multitudes of staircases and escalators, but as they leave, I barely remember them.
I head to the platform of my train. It’s a flat platform where the tracks and standing area are on an equal level. There’s a thin yellow line before the tracks that more closely resemble the old trolley streetcars run by humans. The platform is very bright, as though it’s being lit by natural light even though it’s not.
There are no separations between the train tracks of eastbound and westbound trains, so someone could walk between the tracks to the other side of the platform.
The train tunnels are covered by deep royal blue curtains that shimmer a little. Whenever a train is more than a station away, the curtains would stay open and reveal the tunnels. When a train is nearby, the curtains would close, then rise just as the train rolls into the station.
While I wait for my train, a few track hoppers are loitering the tracks. They take advantage of the unknown of which train will be arriving first and wander along the tracks as they wait for the curtains to close.
When the curtains close, they take their spots in guessing which tunnel the train will come through. Some take the tunnel to my right, others take the tunnel on the other side.
The curtain to my right rises and reveals the tunnel. The track hoppers run and jump out of the way of the fast-approaching train. One guy runs into the adjacent tunnel. Many jump onto my platform and the other set of tracks. One guy doesn’t seem to run fast enough and disappears altogether as the train runs by.
My train is here. I board it nonchalantly. Although my brain doesn’t immediately tell me it’s normal, my reaction to it seems as though nothing is new. Like it’s a regular occurrence.
An image flashes over my dream. It’s an extremely grainy black and white photo of a train car on fire. It looks like an image that would’ve been printed in newspapers in the 1900s. Every pixel blooms a fire that burns itself into the depths of my brain’s memory. It’s slightly eerie.
It switches back to a view of my train, but from the perspective of a camera mounted to the front of the train. As we go through the tunnel, the colour drains from the dream. It then begins to pixelate like the burning still image. More and more of my vision, as a camera, is taken over by a rapid black flame that burns away at what I can see like a sheet of paper.
As the dream fades to black, I wake up.
The interpretation of the dream feels like it’s just out of the reach of a genuine location in downtown Yonindale. It feels like I wasn’t necessarily wrong when I saw hallways of construction zones along construction zones. The dream really did feel so close to home yet unfamiliar.
Downtown Yonindale is a very blurring experience compared to the open world of the suburbs. Even the uptown or far west feels like concrete palaces rippling over the greenery of the world. Perhaps that is what my brain was getting at that my eyes don’t perceive whenever I go there.
I wonder if anyone else feels like this when they leave the small, suburban, or rural towns and head to the big city; like a bell has been hit beside your head.
But even though Yonindale is dizzying, I think it’s good to get out and go there. Not just because I used to have a hard time travelling and having a sense of direction (despite being a vampire), but also because it makes me appreciate my home and the fields of trees and crops not taken care of.
I think getting out in the uncomfortable, once in a while, helps more than hurts, especially whatever the brain truly thinks is uncomfortable. Get out if you can and be uncomfortable with your brain. Discomfort grows the best comfort.
— Heleza
