Dream: The piano in the river

This dream is set in Hawaii – it’s not really obvious how it is so, but I know it. I am under a very large tree, perhaps a banyan tree with all its roots draping languidly, providing a great big shade. The tree is set on volcanic lava rock, a black flowing sheet frozen in time. I sit on the black rock with two other girls and we are watching the river drift by.

A part of the tree is just in front of us, and we don’t cross to the other side of the branches where we would have a full view of the river. Suddenly one of the girls stands up and says that she wants to see the river. I stand up too, but the third girl stops us both, saying it is dangerous. They both sit back down but I venture past the thicket of branches right in front of us. Just a few metres away, I am at the edge of the water. I can hear their voices calling out to me, but I step into the river with no hesitation.

As the water rushes past, I start to swim. I am acutely aware of all the joints in my body moving in the pattern that they are supposed to. The river is flowing fast, but I swim effortlessly, as though I am swimming in a pool with no current at all. Soon I reach the middle of the river where the water is very still. Looking back, I can see the shoreline with the huge banyan tree, but it is a fair way away now and I feel a little afraid. The currents that I swam through seem so impossibly strong now that I am in the still centre of the river.

I see a black object bobbing in the river, a little way away. I swim towards it and within a few minutes I see it is a piano. A black, short upright, a very practical style – probably a Kawai or a Toyota. Only the Japanese make these unadorned, functional pianos without the scrolls and ornaments of European pianos. I open the lid and press the keys, but they are totally waterlogged and no sound comes out. I lift the lid and look inside, and the strings lay there quietly as if they are sleeping. I try to watch the hammers as I press the keys again, but I begin to lose my balance in the water and I have to give it up.

What does it mean? I wonder to myself. How does a piano get to be floating in the middle of the river?

All of a sudden, a thought enters my mind that I must go to look for P, because I have been away for a very long time. I look all around me, but the banyan tree is no longer obvious. The shoreline is full of trees, and none of them look like the tree. I start to swim towards the shore anyway, and within a few strokes I am caught in the tide. It wraps violently around me, and dunks my head under the surface. Just as I start to gag, a wave lifts me up and dumps me again. I fall hard on my face, my eyes fill with water and I lose my vision. My arms and legs struggle to keep me afloat, but the waves are utterly relentless. Lost in despair, I wake up.

Dream: a "snowmobile" and pet therapy

This dream starts next to a large, deep lake. It is twilight and the season is deep winter – the lake is frozen and all around us, the trees are shimmering.

There is a group of us, maybe 5 or 6 people, no-one that I recognise. We arrange ourselves in pairs onto snowmobile like things, except they are not quite snowmobiles. I don’t know enough about them to really know the difference, but I know it’s not quite right.

As we set out onto the lake we make barely any noise at all, gliding into the last of the light. I look behind me and see two parallel tracks, like skiing tracks. I realise that there is no steering device on the “snowmobile”, and but it seems to have a planned track, turning this way and that. We get to the other side of the large lake and with a small unceremonious clunk, enter the track at the mouth of the forest.

It is darker in the forest, the light rapidly fading. I see the trees blurring by but not much else. The “snowmobile” takes an increasingly complex imaginary track, until we get to a small crevice under a hill. It is so small that we would have gone straight past, but with an almost imperceptible sinking motion, the snow below us gives way and we dip close enough to get into the crevice.

The tunnel is totally dark, and it takes a while for my eyes to adjust. It is only then that I realise we have lost the other “snowmobilers”, and I wonder if we are lost. Even inside the tunnel, the “snowmobile” knows its way. Suddenly I see a shadow up ahead and my heart starts racing.

Is it a ghost? I ask my partner “snowmobiler”, who has been quiet up to this point.

Oh yes, there are many in this tunnel. She replies.

Feeling a little scared now, but committed to the sense of inevitability, I try to take in whatever little details I can make out in the darkness. Soon I start seeing skeletons, lots and lots of them, at first they seem realistic (like the anatomy ones) then they become increasingly comic until they are hardly anything more than a cartoon.

Is this an amusement park? I wonder.

Then the “snowmobile” suddenly stops and we get out in the darkness. The other girl silently leads me to a rock which she presses – a special hidden door opens and we go behind it into another tunnel which is lit. Further along, the corridor starts to twist and bend and I soon lose all sense of direction. We come to a collection of rooms which look identical from the outside – beige, laminated, no handle. From the dozens of rooms she confidently selects one, and pushes it open.

We step into an apartment, warm and cosy like someone’s home. As we walk throughout the apartment a large brown dog (maybe a groodle?) comes up to me and tries to get close. I start patting the dog and playing with it, and it seems to be quite happy.

Suddenly a lady appears in the room, though we haven’t heard any footsteps warning of her approach. She is friendly to the other girl who calls her “aunty”, and she smiles at me and then at the dog. She comes over and pats the dog as well, who is happy with the attention. Then she turns to me and says, did you know that dog therapy is a proven form of treatment for cancer?

Then my alarm goes off and I wake up.