OK, not really – it was a dream.
It didn’t take me long to start dreaming “driving” dreams again. And I haven’t even done much driving, yet. The dream started kind of vaguely, with my driving my Nissan pickup around Japan and Korea. Which makes sense, of course, given I recently was traveling there and only now returned to Minnesota to be driving my pickup, running errands. But then the dream became very vivid.
I drove it onto a ferry boat. Despite the fact that I never got near the automobile deck on any of the ferries I rode, the ferry auto-deck was rendered in great detail, with appropriate Korean-language warning signs (who knows if they were correct), appropriate makes of vehicle (Hyudais and Kias and Samsung-Renaults and Ssangyong SUVs, etc), and appropriate men standing around smoking. My dream-truck was rendered in great detail, too, with its post-two-year-storage coating of dust on the hood and dented front license plate (actually, that wasn’t quite accurate, as my actual front license plate doesn’t look so dented, as far as I can tell looking out the window at it, just now).
The truck was parked at one end of the auto-deck on the ferry, right up against one of the fold-down ramps for unloading the cars when the ferry docks. I fixated on one of the fat, smooth steel rods or “bolts” that are used to hook the ramp up by passing through a padlock hasp sort of arrangement in order to hold it in place, and the fat cotter pin through the end of it.
Looking out through the crack between the ramp and the steel wall of the ferry, I saw the Seoul skyline gliding past. All of which is implausible – there are no vehicle ferries on the Han River through Seoul, and it’s unlikely I’d be driving my truck in Korea, right? But such are dreams.
Then the cotter-pin I’d fixated on popped out, the metal rod popped out of its hasp, and the ramp fell open. The boat was rocking violently, although I saw no waves. And so my truck slipped off the deck and into the muddy river water, almost soundlessly. The men smoking cigarettes hardly noticed. I felt very little alarm, either. And that was the dream.
Interesting symbolism. At right, the truck in question. No picture of the ferry auto-deck, however – I didn’t have my cellphone camera in dreamland. But below is the Han River, as seen from the “63” building in June.
