12:00 p.m. - 2003-08-23
Stepford College Students
Another Dali dream. This one at an ivied college. It's autumn and the colours of nature are exquisite. Staff and students constantly on the go but all walking as if in a marathon - all in the same direction, no variation in pattern or route, never looking up at the sky. Every morning arising, wearing the same clothes, walking in the same circle never questioning, never thinking. Some of the poor souls are conscious of the futility of the routine, but they aren't allowed to leave. The professors look like figures out of Rembrandt paintings. They all emerge from a single building and stand waiting for adulation from the surrounding crowds - no real exchange of emotion or ideas, entities to themselves.
There are two buildings that have been abandoned for a long time. One is a cafeteria. It has a grandeur more like an old fashioned theatre - in the round. It has recently been refurbished, but the old ghosts and old evils come to life, when fresh victims enter the halls. It's a bit like watching a kaleidoscope of horror movies, when following the stories being played out there. The source or center of the evil seems to reside in the head chef. All lines of enquiry lead back to him.
The other deserted building had been a lecture hall for "the great minds" or a convention centre when not otherwise in use. I have been assigned the task of reopening it. A lecture by a group of famed humanitarians is slated for the evening and guests are already arriving. There are still corners of the building that are haunted, just as was the cafeteria, but there is also a realization that a criminal element was using the frightening reputation of the building to keep everyone away from their center of activity.
At one point I find myself locked in a stage-like room where two men are threatening me. Showing me what they are going to do to me, if the reopening of the building is successful. I pick up some kind of construction equipment and strike a metal pillar in the room. The whole room rotates and the doors open; the men flee. They don't wish to be identified - they hold very high positions in the college milieu (community).
I join the growing crowds coming for the lecture, but am dismayed to find that the people who circulate mindlessly along the pathways of the college during the day have invaded this function. They circulate like robots endlessly, intimidating the people who truly want to learn from the lecturers scheduled tonight. The robotic people don't enter the auditorium; they don't even realize it is there. I start ushering the real people into the theater so that they can feel safe from the robots. I recognize a lot of old friends and co-workers / volunteers waiting for me to join them.
I want to do that but first I need to draw something very strange to the attention of the person I am reporting to. There has been significant vandalism in the building that was not there earlier in the day. In thick plate glass doors the number "60" has been cut with some sort of glass cutter. Jagged pieces of glass extrude from the doors at a variety of angles. There are holes kicked in bathroom walls. The paint has been gouged from the walls along the second floor corridors. There is a sense of threat and a feeling that something really awful will happen tonight if it isn't repaired before the lecture is done. It appears the robotic people are guarding the damage - creating a barrier to anyone who tries to fix it.
Suddenly I find myself in a pastoral setting, on a hillside. There are two couples - myself and my partner (I have none in real time) and our friends. There is also a spiritual teacher of some stature waiting for us and talking about what we must do. There has been some sort of purge of people of our faith and it is imperative that we find a safe place for something we are protecting. When we meet with the teacher, he shows us mind to mind that the place we are seeking is in Africa. It is the only way to communicate that can't be intercepted. We are grieved because we don't want to leave this hillside. The other couple chooses to stay. We - my "partner" and I - agree that we will go. So ends the dream.
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