Last night I dreamed that the earth shook. I also dreamed that a random New York taxi driver threw a huge bag of weed at me, but that part makes far less sense.
I was in an apartment in San Francisco with bright white ornamental doorframes, and when I felt the earth begin to shake I grabbed my sister from the bed she was sleeping in and made us both stand clutching the doorframe until it stopped. Afterwards I was afraid I had imagined the whole thing, so I Googled “San Francisco earthquake” on my Blackberry, and thankfully the US Geological Survey confirmed that I had not hallucinated the event. The earthquake was a magnitude 4.
It’s unsurprising that I doubted the legitimacy of the quake even in my dream, since I have a pretty irrationally intense fear of them. When my ex and I were planning our move out to SF, I made him fill out an “Earthquake Preparedness Worksheet” with me so that we could insulate his apartment from earthquake damage. We also planned to meet at the Southeast entrance of the 24th St. Mission BART station in the event of a natural disaster. I still wonder sometimes if, when the Big One hits, either of us will show up now that we no longer love each other.
According to the Dream Dictionary, “To dream of an earthquake, suggests that you are experiencing a major “shake-up” that is threatening your stability and foundation. The dream highlights your insecurity, fears and sense of helplessness.” Considering that I graduated from college this week and am moving to an entirely new city to start an entirely new job in less than a month, I suppose my fears manifesting themselves as tectonic chaos in dreamland makes complete sense.
I think there’s something telling about the fact that my sister was in the dream with me, though, since she’s going to school in Connecticut next year, a long way from where I’ll be in California. There was something very maternal in the way I rushed her to the doorway. I remember feeling annoyed with myself for being so paranoid, but not really giving a shit because I just wanted her to be safe.
I don’t think many people know this, but my stepmother is about eight months pregnant, which means that by the end of next month I will have a brand new (half) brother or sister. I’ve spent a lot of time consciously not thinking about this, because I have enough to worry about in my own personal life, and the fact that I’ll be living 3,000 miles away from my family makes the whole event seem rather peripheral. This pregnancy is the culmination of a long, grueling four-year process of my Dad and Stepmother attempting to have a baby, and then considering adoption, and then finally getting pregnant, all the while putting up with my sister’s incessant bitching about it. This past weekend my sister even said, “I feel like you’re my only family.” Statements like that make me feel like shit for moving to San Francisco.
I don’t know why I haven’t thought about this whole thing much, because it’s kind of a big deal. I won’t be physically there but my whole familial universe is about to change dramatically and I’m kind of just like, “Oh, cool, they put more documentaries on Hulu.” The whole thing reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from JSF’s Everything is Illuminated:
When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calendar that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did. Where the smoke from a chimney ended. How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table. I spent my life learning to feel less. Every day I felt less. Is that growing old? Or is it something worse?
To be fair, I still think I’m pretty damn permeable. I cry at least four times a week and think constantly about the distinction between ‘heaviness’ and ‘lightness’ and I look into people’s eyes on the subway, which I think freaks them out. But for some reason this event is one I have neatly packaged and pushed into a corner. I tuck it away, unopened.
Is becoming emotionally detached part of growing up, or am I just in denial? I guess the earthquake dream points to the latter. It’s easy to see the dream as a subconscious manifestation of my fear of actual physical earthquakes, something I worry about frequently since I’m moving to a place that’s long overdue for massive geological destruction.
It’s a lot harder to admit that the earthquake might be metaphorical, to concede that the Dream Dictionary is right. My world is changing, and if I don’t come to grips with every single change, my dreams will probably continue to feature natural disasters that wake me up in the night, shaking, drenched.
That last picture is the San Francisco skyline constructed out of jello. How cool is that?