One element of my dreams I often forget to mention

(01:22:07 CST)

One element of my dreams I often forget to mention

If I had to imagine what the archetype for the hill was, I would say the hill by my middle school. Felt like a great big thing to me, when I first saw it. Not a hill, maybe. what do you call a one-sided slope that tumbles off at a great angle? Sort of like a hill except it gradually builds for miles on one side and then goes away at once on the other, as though the land went through a sudden altitude adjustment to get back level? One of those. About three stories, maybe more, which was huge for a ten-year-old, and so steep that walking down it was almost always harder than rolling down it. Which we did, and it was great fun, but it hurt so much. I can remember one time running down it, and then I got to the bottom, and the change of angle was so great that it felt like it was about to break my hips and send me sprawling. I stayed upright, though.

Of what this hill might archetype, well, I've not got to that yet. When I describe my dreams, there are maybe five symbolic units that show up a lot, a whole lot: tunnels, walls, water, trees, masks. Masks are a tricky thing, they often show up in my dream by the ability of things and people to change who or what they are over time. The tunnels, walls, and trees often build-up into a sense of being trapped, forced into a maze, or a puzzle to be solved. The water (and a beast, which might just be water since every time I've stopped to face to beast, a flood occurs). There are other things: deep forests and little houses. I grew up in South Alabama, mind. I'm probably just seeing my childhood.

The part I often overlook in describing these dreams is the hill. Hill-thing. See above for what I am talking about. Just about all of the dreams I have that have that quality, that symbolic quality that makes you think "I wonder what he meant by that?", have some big old feck all hill. Water is often coming down it. Grass often grows in tufts up it. Sometimes houses are on it. Going up, it tires you but you feel balanced. Going down, it feels so steep, that you are stepping off into air. If you try driving up or down it, all you can see is sky and the distant ground.

Sure, it aways feels like an obstacle. It literally is an obstacle. There is just something else about it, though, somehow it represents the bringer of change, the source of the water. It is, in some ways, a wall in and of itself and every time I climb it down or up whatever was there before is not afterwards.

The maze is never in the hill, though stairs often are, and frankly the maze and the hill feel separate; just related.

Yeah, time to look these things up, I suppose.

Si Vales, Valeo

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