Interpret This

The other night, I dreamed that we went to a public building to hear someone speak. 

We sat in the kind of chairs with desks attached that are in high schools.  In fact, one of my friends from high school was there.  We waited a long, long time for something to happen.  After a while, I noticed that people were trying to sleep in those chairs, contorting their bodies this way and that, trying to get comfortable.  I noticed my high school friend had taken her dress off in order to increase her comfort as we waited.  It got darker.  We grew colder. 

About the time it seemed dawn should be breaking, nothing had happened still.  I gave up and ventured into another room, a big kitchen or cafeteria.  The yellow walls and light were bright and cheery in there, and food was being dished up.  What an improvement!  I grabbed a plate and went around the room filling it.  The food was beautiful, intricate!  Salads had foods shaped like dragonflies and butterflies.  Everything smelled and looked great.  The variety was amazing.  I filled my plate up to the edges.

But, then I noticed that some of the utensils available to take were dirty.  And then that food was actually being cheerfully dished up onto dirty plates.  I marveled that I seemed to be the only one noticing this.  Why do the people here settle for this, I wondered?  As I looked at my own plate, I realized that in the time I had taken to go around the room, my food had disintegrated, as if the cell walls of the food had melted away.  The lovely food I had taken looked hardly palatable--just a big mass of gray blobs the consistency of instant potatoes. 

I looked around at all the many other people walking around filling their plates.  The food being dished up still looked amazing, but it rapidly deteriorated once on the plates.  Yet, people were still walking around, waiting in lines, filling their plates, not noticing that it was pointless unless they wanted to eat gray slop. 

My attention was caught by the light and movements and clearly defined objects in another room.  I went in there, and there were brightly-colored and interesting objects.  My interest was caught over and over and over again by all the varied things to look at and investigate. 

Other rooms held books, puzzles, statues, toys, instruments, gems, art, tools--as if we were in some sort of museum with a room for every type of thing in the world. 

Again, everything was clear, crisp, bright, beautiful, intricate, and interesting in the beginning, but rapidly deteriorated into piles of soggy paper mache.  And still, hoards of people circled, being taken in by what seemed offered, but soon sifting through nothing but garbage.

I started to realize that, no matter what I found, this place was going to be like that, and that I needed to find my way out of it.  Never mind the puzzles I could try to solve or the books I could try to read--none of that was lasting.  I needed to read the situation and solve the true puzzle--how to overcome the entire place.

While it had taken hours for things to deteriorate enough for me to leave the first room, the rate of deterioration was increasing.  Things slipped out of my hands within moments.

I saw my husband and started sharing my insights with him.

Instead of looking for objects of interest, we started immediately looking, upon entering new rooms, for stairs, ladders, signs of natural light--anything that would help us rise out of the mulch the multitudes were slogging through and escape.

Our children were with us now, and the pace was fast.  We hurried our way through room after room, ignoring all distractions and just heading for whatever seemed to be the way out.

I was in a library where books turned to stapled packets of papers and then worse as soon as I touched them.  I climbed the bookcases, clutching at the upward-pointing arrows on the top of each book, which fell out of my hands as soon as I could grab them. 

I called out my husband's name.  "I found the way up!" I shouted to him as I climbed as fast as I could, hoping I could save myself, without really going anywhere.  Looking over my shoulder, I called out again.  But I'd lost him.  Like everyone else, he was distractedly thumbing through something, as it crumbled to dust..