An odd
dream, even for me ... Everything took place in
Egypt. The setting was a
journey back to the roots of
religion. A theme trip, if you will, and the part in my dream was a visit to the original
temple of the
Jewish people in
exile in
Egypt (don't ask me, it's my
subconscious coming up with this stuff) and a visit to the
pyramids.
The sky was, cliche-wise, the color of
red wine.
Read that again. The entire
dream, be it
morning,
noon or
night, that sky remained red as
blood, red as
wine. That's the most poignant image remaining with me, that red sky, against the backdrop of the pyramids and the temples, seeing a yellow
sun melting into that painfully unnatural redness. It was beautiful and scary, and even though it was a
dream, I think it will remain with me for a long time.
We stayed in a
hostel about a mile from the
pyramids. I remember a scene from the dream, checking into the
hostel, the inn-keeper (for want of a better word) showing us to the room, the sight of the
red sky through the curtains, the sand of the
desert under the sky.
Part of the stay included a guided tour to the historic sites in the
vicinity. Painfully corny, a tourbus, a group of obvious tourists with cameras, driving to one of the most
monumental sites you can imagine. I never saw a
pyramid in real life, but in my dreams, the things must have been 10 times the size of the actual buildings. I wish I could
paint, so I could impart the
grandeur of the impossibly huge buildings, built from weathered yellow stone, sticking out of the desert under that insanely red sky.
Another scene: a visit to some rooms in the
pyramid. Walking through dark corridors, the feeling of being underground. I remember the visit to the room of the
temple prostitutes, looking at
mummies wrapped in
bandages, and realizing they used to be gorgeous women.
In the dream I dreamed that I met one of them. It's an odd thing, dreaming of something while you are dreaming.
Jorge Luis Borges would have a ball with it.
It was one of those dreams that lasted for several days, but when I woke up, I had only been asleep for an hour or two.