World Dream Atlas

« I’ve had one recurring nightmare, and it’s ultra-realistic. It starts early in the morning. I’m loading vegetables into a 1930’s era vehicle with my son. I’m in my mid-thirties – about the age I am now, and my son,who exists only in the dream, is about twelve.
We drive to the next town, and we’re in one of the smaller markets on the edge, when there’s a commotion in the distance. World War II era vehicles come tearing into town and soldiers begin to massacre everyone in the square. There is the sense that they don’t see us as people. There is a delight in exterminating us. I’m separated from my son, and I’m desperately searching for him. Later, I hide in a well. I slip over the edge, and there’s other people down there fighting in the water. Somehow, I survive. Afterwards, I carry bodies to the well and wash them, and I’m looking for my son, and I never find him. It was the same dream for years on end. I remember falling to the earth and the smell and the taste of it. I’ve never experienced that soil anywhere before. It had an alkaline mineral flavor to it, soft loamy clay with a faint fertile richness. Most of all I remember my son – how dearly I loved him, how proud of him I was. I don’t think I know anyone like him – so deeply good, so affectionate, and playful. I remember that in the dream I was showing him how to trim tomatoes. They have to have the little bud removed to keep the fruit sweet. He learned so quickly and then he immediately came up with an even better way of doing it. He was always coming up with better ways to do things than I had ever thought of. He had a very quick mind. Maybe he was comparable to how I was at that age – just less hurt. I was molested and physically abused as a small child. That made me extremely withdrawn. He might be the child I would have become if life had been different. »

— Black Rock City, USA