Ruth
The Living Force
This is a bit of a boring old house dream, but it does have a little bit of action. Its from late June.
I found myself in a large house. I believe it was my house. It was much bigger than what you'd expect an ordinary residence to be, but it may have been some form of an analogy for the self. It gave the impression of being both a place of work and a place to live. There were two separate outside 'environments'. The first was the front office and it looked like it ran off a suburban street. The other two sides of the house were both situated in a bush setting.
The house only had three sides.
The first side was the front, and looked a lot like some of the nursing homes I've worked in. They are designed to look both welcoming and business like ('homely' and efficient, lol). There was a lot of activity; most of it going on behind the scenes in a modern looking office, which was where all the paperwork got done. This part was separate from the front lobby.
Much to my surprise, there was also a third part to this section. It was a 'panic room' where we all went when we were 'under attack'. From in here, you could see out into the main lobby to the front door, but the people out there could not see in. It was a separate area from the office and the lobby part. I looked at the people in the office and they didn't seem to be taking much notice of this part. I wondered if they weren't capable of deliberately ignoring danger.
During this time a 'workmate' rushed in and said we all had to go quickly to the 'panic room' because we were 'under attack'. In the distance, I could hear what sounded like distant gun fire. Whatever attack we were under was not coming from our immediate area, but we went into the panic room anyway. As I looked out at the front door and I saw a girl I recognised from work and a companion. This girl recently had a 'perfume party' at her house and had got a couple of other people to 'sign-up' to host one too, but had not turned up to their parties or supported any of their efforts. I said to my companion: "I wonder if she can see in?"
After the gunfire had ceased, I noticed that the workers in the office hadn't even noticed anything amiss. They were going about their business as usual. I went round to the other side of the house. This side was very bleak and depressing. It looked like the side of a weatherboard house set on the side of a very steep hill. There was no veranda, only a wall with a couple of windows in it and the house on this side was on top of a very steep drop. This part was in a bush setting. I looked out and saw what appeared to be a firebreak going down the hill across the valley and into the distance. It was only a couple of feet wide and looked like a long black ugly 'scar' across the landscape. I knew that it was made of pitch, so it wasn't going to stop any fire. I asked what it was designed to do and why I had put it there (because I knew that I had done it). Apparently it was there to keep 'stuff' out. I wasn't terribly impressed with my ugly and not at all useful handiwork.
I went back into the house, and out the back, which was where I saw the result of the 'attack'. Here, there was a verandah all along the back of the house and the ground was flat and again in a bush setting. The verandah had been boarded up by placing planks horizontally and nailing them to the outside down supports of the verandah. These had been shot to pieces in what could only be described wanton destruction. (sort of what was done to the caravan in Charlie's Angles). I looked back in time to see what happened and 'saw' a group of about fifteen young men in army fatigues with machine guns standing in a line blasting out the boarded up parts of the verandah. After that had happened, I saw out of the corner of my eye, my mother walking round the veranda going 'blah, blah, blah' and never stopping to listen to any answers to questions she asked while she just continued to talk. I thought "that'd be right", weird things follow that woman around and she seems completely oblivious to it all (family!).
I asked who had put up those boards and the answer I got back was it was my father and my (maternal) grandfather. I did wonder why they had done such a gloomy thing as to put up those boards and block out all the sunlight.
In spite of the wood splinters and mess everywhere, the verandah was definitely a lot better with all the boards gone. I looked at what was left on the verandah. There was a cardboard box with brown and white baby mice (they could have been kittens) in it and a rather odd looking ancient pot plant tilted on its side with a bullet hole to the pot. The plant gave off a rather ugly feeling. I think it represented some sort of 4th density technology and it seemed to be 'watching' me in a rather creepy sort of a way (the plant was a 'plant'?). The baby mice were fascinating. I think they represented creativity. It was strange, the wanton destruction of the attack had uncovered both of these, neither of which I would have been aware of or even interested in, if those ajs hadn't been shootin' up the house.
