Oh come on. If you really are a writer you’ve experienced it. There was some character nagging at you to tell their story and you ignored it because you thought the story was sh*t. Finally, you wake up early after having had “the strangest dream” and you sit down at the keyboard. Four plus hours later your fingers are numb, wrists hurt, and your page total is somewhere north of 80. You realize you haven’t eaten and you are still blaming whatever it was you at last night for the dream.
For the past few months, on more than one occasion I’ve been having the same dream about trying to cross a dilapidated bridge. I have not been able to find any images or drawings of a bridge similar to that which appears in my mind. All of these images have some attributes of the bridge, but none are close enough to be even a first or second cousin.
It is a weird thing to have dreams one recalls about the same thing, but not the same dream. Each time it happens the bridge is in a different location and a different condition. Sometimes I’m on foot and other times in a vehicle.
Yes, I’m sure there will be political extremists who will leap to point out this is all because of President Trump’s purge of poor people from America, also know as the Republican Health Care Plan. While a busted down bridge crossing having a high probability of death would be an apt analogy for the poor people purge plan, this has been going on much longer than that. Sometimes it is months pushing a year before I have yet another rickety old bridge crossing dream. No, as a writer I know this is a character which simply hasn’t figured out just how to tell me their story and is certainly doing everything in their power to avoid giving up their name. These things happen in writer’s lives. Something you saw/heard/read about long ago found a hidden spot in the back of your mind and began to build its own little world. When that world is nearing completion it tries to get you to take notice. The only trouble is, the longer it has been hiding, the better it got at hiding itself. Revelation isn’t easy for such a world.
No, the rickety busted rusted bridge dream has been popping up for a few years now. It changes form and location but it is always a bridge which must be crossed even though it fills a person with a deep sense of foreboding about its nefarious purposes.
The first time I had this dream was quite long ago. Like everybody else in the world I blamed it on something I ate. It was the kind of dream which stuck with you though, at least the kind which sticks with a writer. That first bridge was actually steel. It arched needlessly high over a large body of water and had been wide enough to carry vehicles at one time. My ability to draw free-hand is even worse than my ability to put pen to paper when it comes to creating something legible. Words really cannot fully describe the design or state of the bridge. We have all seen bridges much like this:
Now, imagine such a bridge arching far higher without the hanging flat roadway underneath where the decking had been placed on the top of the arch. Keep in mind dreams don’t much care about physics or engineering principles. Now imagine most of the decking gone where one has to walk across on the horribly rusted I-beams on the sides hoping not to get blown off because any guardrails or safety cables had long since rotted away.
Such a bridge appeared in dreams multiple times in worsening condition. It left an impression that its condition was deliberate. “Undesirables,” whoever they were, got dropped off by boat and no boats were allowed to exist on the island. The only way back to the mainland was via this bridge which killed more than the squalid conditions of the island. Tall, crumbling buildings on the island allowed the cast-offs to peer across the water at the elites living in their city of splendor and excess. Yes, the bridge and its condition felt deliberate, as if there was some requirement the elites provide a “path to a better life” and this is what they deemed appropriate. Something which would kill the vast majority which tried.
It’s a weird and horrible feeling to dream yourself on the “undesirable” side with an immense desire to cross. It’s an even weirder dream to actually feel the rusted iron in your hands as you crawl across in a cold wind with a beating rain at night because that is the only time no one will be watching on the other side.
Now you have the dream, but will you write about it?
