The dream that I was struggling with as I woke up this morning was not very narrative in structure, more episodic but repetitive. The below is a summary of something that in the dream was more circular.
Andrew and I had ended up wandering around some large underground space (which bears relation to some of our explorations in Seoul yesterday), but I became convinced we were in a space station. Yet, for a space station, or for an underground mall, it was quite strange. Everything was wood, like the interior of a restored wooden faux-Victorian shopping mall – all high ceilings, high Belle Epoque stained glass, wooden floors, balconies and balustrades.
Although the place was very finely wrought and beautiful, it was overlain by decay and disorder. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of squatters living in the various rooms and halls. There were sleeping bags and tents set up, like an Occupy encampment, and there was IT equipment everywhere, just scattered: racks of servers, racks of routers, wires laid out willy-nilly on the floor. Hippies sat cross-legged with laptops, and would reach out and grab a dangling ethernet cable.
Andrew and I were searching for my Great Aunt Mildred (my mother's mother's sister). Andrew never knew "Aunt Mid" – she's not on his side of the family (recall that Andrew is my half-brother, so his maternal relatives are not the same as my maternal relatives). I was quite close to my Aunt Mid before she died in the early 90s, in a strange way. We shared a passion for left-leaning politics and academic-style speculative sociology, and we had exchanged long series of letters at various times on various topics.
I wasn't sure why we were looking for her, because even inside the dream, I already knew she was dead. At some point, because of this, we shifted the focus of our search to finding our sister. We were wandering in and out of the maze of interconnected rooms, brilliant with sunlight shining through high windows and glimpses of dark space, too.
I would ask, "Have you seen my sister?" of various random old men eating bowls of rice or hippy children chanting songs in circles.
Suddenly this woman presented herself, very solicitous and manipulative. She was short but she was quite fat, and had a round, Caucasian face with close-cropped gray hair, like a Buddhist nun. Definitely NOT my sister.
"Who are you?" Andrew asked.
"Why, I'm your sister," she said, nonchalantly. She was trying to get us to go through this doorway. The room beyond was dark. Andrew was very sceptical, and was pulling away. I was following along, not out of trust but more a kind of curiosity.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"Trust me," she said, but there was something disingenuous in her smile.
The whole situation played out again, with slight variations. And again.
Eventually, I woke up.