TOW 		             
Dreaming; Night of
May 27, 1987
       7:28              3Else before. I was with a group (a class?) led by (taught by?) KP. We went on some sort of camping excursion out in the middle of nowhere. We walked across some plains, occasionally swimming across residual pools of water that had receded, until we reached a low, broad hill on which we decided to set up camp. I and my best buddy grabbed a couple of shovels and started building a latrine. In a time-compressed sequence, we constructed a complex yet simple system, with drains, moats, and overflows. Ms. P was very skeptical of the setup. She drafted a volunteer and had him urinate into a strategic location in the system, following its progress until she was satisfied that the system was a viable one. Just then, I happened to gaze back across the plains. They were covered with water, the surface of which was marked by many small, violent waves. As I watched, I saw that the water level was rising rapidly. Hoping that our hill was higher than the water's high mark, I warned the others, got them to go to higher ground. The water was right behind us, rising until it completely covered the hill, as well as everything else in sight, and we had to swim for it. Here, there was a shift. I was swimming underwater through part of a town or village, part of which, Venice-like, was submerged. I was able to breathe underwater just as easily as above. Small colored fish that looked animated flashed by from time to time. This sequence looked a lot like the beneath-the-lagoon sequence in Bedknobs and Broomsticks. In fact, V was briefly there with me, just long enough to doubt whether this was the way the plot of B&B had gone. I moved around a bit more, changing a couple of times into other creatures, cats, frogs, and such. I had to rescue a member of my group (which was now a family group) from a cat, which had captured him in his present form (a frog, I think) and dragged him back down into a dark recess. After a bit, we surfaced and there was a slight shift. I saw that we were in a small fishing town, in the pier area. For some reason, we climbed aboad a yacht, which I immediately fell in love with. We discovered that we now owned it, since whoever had had it had left a note bestowing it upon the first person to board it (actually, this was a thought I had during the dream which became reality after I thought it). It was filthy, with years of dirt accumulated on it, so we immediately set to cleaning it up, arguing a bit over who would get the bathroom. I believe there was a slight jump forward in time here, and just as we were finishing, enters the bad guy, with an assistant. He claims to hold the mortgage on the boat, which he says stands at twelve hundred and some dollars. He welcomes us as the new owners of the boat and demands payment. My "father" hands him the keys to our car, and he leaves, satisfied. I'm momentarily concerned at our having burned our bridges so, but then I realize I'd much rather have the boat, on which we can live, as well as explore and have fun on, than the car. There's another slight temporal shift forward. We're all outside, having gotten the boat into launch position. We enlist the aid of a man on the docks, explaining that we're new at this. The boat is hooked up to numerous cables, which connect to one cable, which goes up through a pulley and comes back down. My father, under the man's direction, grabs the free end and pulls, lifting the entire boat up off the ground and swinging it out over the water. I am amazed that he is able to do so. As he lowers it into the water, M and I cry out in joy as we see an enormous catfish caught on the end of one of the cables coming out of the water. We grab and gut the monster immediately. The man tells us not to kill any fish in future that we don't intend to eat. We assure him that we do intend to eat this fish, and M runs off with it toward the kitchen on the boat. (G)