Dream Journals
When I was younger, at various periods of my quest for "self-improvement," I have briefly at times made an effort to write down and record my dreams upon waking. With life and motivation being that they are, it is something I have not done much of, and not for years upon years. This morning is something different.
I currently live not at the foot of a volcano, within eyesight of a volcano, or rather, few volcanoes with one standing out and being more famous than the others. So it was that night had fallen when I heard a rumble and looked over the upon the horizon to see a volcano with break plumes of smoke rising from the top followed by the glow of fire and brimstone. There was excitement in the air to see the mighty giant of old coming to life. I found myself on a military base, not a clean and sterile one many might be familiar with in civilization, but more like the eclecticiveness of one that sprouts in the desert or remote locations of the world, an ad hoc city sprung to live and growing out from troop housing and their headquarters, temporary tents that may last for years, with tendrils of shops, work areas which give a touch of post-apocalypse grittiness, a "no man's land" of desperadoes, fortune and adventure seekers bound by our mutual exclusion from the outside world.
As I ran forward to get a better view and document it with my cellular phone camera, winding my way through labyrinths of walk ways with dilapidated buildings and warehouses blocking my view as a made my way towards the far end, I would come into clearings and see the fires growing higher, not just one, but two, and three volcanoes with the central being the main show. Out of the mouth of the volcano, a dancing jester forming from iridescent glows of greens and blues and reds from heat and plasma, electrical discharges in the vortex of sulfur and carbon rising into the evening sky. I pulled out my phone and attempted to open the camera, and yet I found that the graphical touch interface was failing to respond, making errors of screens and windows I did not want to open, I wanted my camera, I wanted to Tik Tok it, to turn it into a YouTube short, to no avail.
Frustrated, I began cursing my social media competition, sure that it was some back-end IT worker who was thwarting my attempt at viral notoriety. I put the phone away and removed myself to another location, moving closer or at another angular field of view. Once again I manuevered through the unfamiliar areas in the heart of the base, cutting through narrow walk lanes. When I would come to a clearing and see the great fire show, I would again attempt to utilize my phone features to document the extraordinary event. Again, and with a more rational mind, I theorized that the electrical event and magnetism associated with this phenomena was the primary cause of my electrical device's malfunction.
Once again I found a location with a view of the happening, when straight ahead on the road I found myself looking down, a tornadoes of ash was forming and heading towards me. Rather than wait there and passively look at this looming wall of destruction march down the road I was one standing one, I dived for a concrete trench on to the port side. Once in the concrete hollow about five feet lower than the adjacent road, and with a storage area in said trench, I found a nook under a shelf and wedged myself as far into the crevice as possible lest an overriding tornado should catch me and pull me and carry me away. I should iterate at this point that I had somehow pulled out an electronic tablet with a which to attempt recording these vents, at which point I saw the tornado and changed my mind quickly.
A few minutes must have passed and not much excitement. The tornado must have decided against following the road I was on and changed direction. Once I determined it was safe to exit my mole hole, I followed the trench through a tent for living quarters, there where racks where soldiers slept, and shower area, as I made my way through to the other side I thought of how odd and fortunate I was to be back at work. Out of the opposite end of the tent, down foot paths, bazaar areas dedicated to shopping for miscellaneous items, collectables, souvenirs, etc. I realized that I no longer had my tablet or phone. I panicked as I struggled to remember from which direction and from what lodgings I had come from.
I back tracked in an attempt to find where my hiding place had been for it was there I must have left my devices. The panic of losing my communication devices exceeded the wonder and awe of seeing volcanoes erupting, the thought of whether the eruption presented a danger(I have heard that in bigger eruptions boulders are ejected into the sky and rain down with tremendous force, hail stones from the inferno). As I ran panicked about unknown areas resembling a slums of large Latin American cities, I reached in my pocket and felt for my phone, two in fact which are the same two I have in my waking life, a sense of relief befell me, the tablet, while an expensive item might be lost, at least I have my means of communicating with the outside world.
It was at this point I woke up, my room still dark, sweating and confused as to what was real. Those feelings I have from waking up from dreams usually fade pretty fast, I realized that I did indeed have my phones still, they work, the tablet is still sitting uncharged in the corner of my home office. After telling myself to make that dream into a Tumblr journal entry, I had another dream, that one faded rapidly and no longer remember it. Those volcanoes however, they were spectacular.