So... More Wonders from my Dreamscape.

I find myself in familiar yet not so familiar surroundings.  I'm back in my home borough of the Bronx just across from Manhattan.  I descend into a subway for a train marked with a black letter in a yellow circle.  Anyone from the Bronx knows there are no lines in the Bronx signified with a black letter in a yellow circle.  The 2 line is a white number in a red circle, while the 4, 5, and 6 lines are white numbers in green circles.

Where in the Bronx is this leading me?

I descend into the station anyway and I board the train to which, according to my internal compass, is headed back into Manhattan.  However, when I exit from a station I arbitrarily decided to leave, I find myself in Hastings-on-Hudson, a town just north of Yonkers.  I'm at Warburton Avenue and Main Street, and the buildings look slightly different.  They're glass and steel instead of brick and mortar.  They are only two to five stories high.  The local record store is moving out because for some reason they can no longer pay the rent.  Then I realized:  THEY ARE GENTRIFYING THE  AREA.

I get on a bus leading down Warburton to Downtown Yonkers, but I wind up in Co-op City in the Bronx. Basically I am going up and down and across Westchester and the Bronx in a bizarre maze.  I find Susan waiting for me in her car.  We drive back into Westchester and park in front of an art gallery.  Once inside, a monumental painting catches my attention:  A large white ship with silver trim and billowing grey-white sails.  The prow is capped by a large gleaming pearl.  The ship is also hovering over the ocean water instead of upon it.

I see a woman in green robes with dark hair and pale skin examining the painting with a sneer.  Her arms are folded across her breast.  I approach her while feeling a sense of dread in the pit of my stomach because I know this woman's voice before I ask her.  As I open my mouth to speak, she turns to face me.  She still smirks and her arms are still folded.  "Yes," she says,  "I am Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld."

Illustration of Ereshkigal by Morii Shizuki.  She looks nothing like this in my dream.

She nods her head toward the painting.  "Aren't you humans vain?" she asks rhetorically.  "You constantly think you can raise yourself to the heavens, with not so much as your bare toes tethering you to the Earth?"

She levels the palm of her hand next to my midriff, as though she was taking a measurement.  "Your ancestors were nearly two feet shorter than you in stature, yet they could gather and take down wooly mammoths for their food.  All of you, between five and a little over six feet, isolate yourselves in front of screens to watch shadow plays.  You never have to worry about sustenance.  You have just enough strength to haul your bloated asses off your couches and hobble over to your refrigerators.  Few of you still go to market.   Most of you have food delivered to your gaping maws."

She shakes her head, "I'd welcome you among the dead, but you would be a waste of space.  You can sink into the deep with that ivory yacht painted on yonder wall."   She gracefully glides away to regard another painting.

Susan meets up with me.  I ask her, "Did you hear what that woman had to say?"

Susan shrugs and says, "Let's go to the supermarket.  We have enough strength in our legs to do that."

We find ourselves on Main Street again next to the local supermarket.  I look around for the mysterious gallery, but it is nowhere to be seen.

We go through the aisles picking up food and ingredients along the way.  I squint my eyes and I see silhouettes of hunter gatherers prowling for what scant amounts of food they can find.   I am afraid they will see us, but they pay us no mind.  They're sharing our space, but they're from a different time.

I ask Susan, "How much more time do we have?  When will we be scratching around for food again like our ancestors?"

I find us in our car again, with our trunk packed with the food we need.  As we drive along the Hudson, I peer across the water to see if there's any sign of that fantastic ship I saw painted in the gallery.  There is nothing but gray water.

I wake up in our bedroom, illuminated by gray morning light.

- JJB