Dream of: 08 December 2001 "Historic Scroll"
Carolina and I were in Portsmouth. We had driven around the town and had ended up on Second Street, right in front of the old Washington Hotel, probably a 15 story structure with a white block facade. Hundreds of people were in the street, but the area seemed strange because no buildings were on either side of the hotel. I could also see through the windows of the hotel that it was gutted -- nothing was in any of the rooms. I suddenly realized everything had burned down for about a block on either side of the hotel and had been torn down, and the hotel itself had been burned out. I was amazed at what I was seeing.
After we had passed the hotel, I told Carolina I wanted to go back and look at it again. She wanted to go someplace herself, to some kind of news group in Portsmouth. She wasn't working now, so she wanted to spend the day with the news group. I told her that she was getting to be like her friend, Alma, that she didn't have a job right now, and that she was going around and trying to do things with news groups. I didn't want her to go, but she was insistent. I knew she had made up her mind and apparently I could do nothing about it.
I told her I first wanted to go back and look at what I had seen, and then she could go. So I parked the car. She stayed in the car while I stepped out and started walking back. I was wondering whether the Washington Hotel would be torn down. I thought about how much renovating the rooms would cost (very expensive), and how the renovation would proceed. Would single apartments stretch all the way from the front to the back, or would separate apartments be built in the front and in the back?
After I had walked about a block, I abruptly noticed a statue looming above me on the corner of the street. I had never noticed this statue before. It was a woman about twice human size, made of white marble. It was moving, animated. With a smile on her face, the woman bent over and picked up a scroll. She opened the scroll as if she were going to read it; then she laughed and laid the scroll back down. Then she picked up another scroll.
I thought the statue had something to do with the American War of Independence. As I thought of this, I started thinking about the Revolutionary War and something struck me which I had never thought of before. I realized for the first time the men who had fought in the Revolution had known exactly what they had been doing. In the past I had thought they had gone on a revolutionary lark. But the men who had started the Revolution had been very learned, and they had realized the extent of the land in North America. If they could break away from England and lay claim to the land, they could become rich beyond their wildest dreams. All this land out west was just waiting to be taken. People like Daniel Boone for example had definitely known what they had been doing.
I continued walking until I reached the Washington Hotel. So many people were here that I got caught in the crowd and I could barely move. Police were trying to maintain control. I now had a bicycle which I was pushing. Suddenly the people were moving and the police were threatening them and telling the people to stop. The people kept moving, however, and I moved with the crowd. I kept walking, afraid the police would arrest me because I hadn't stopped.
I started to worry a little about Carolina because I had left her by herself. I finally parked my bicycle and hurried back to the car. I kept walking until I realized I must have passed where I had parked the car, a big older model car from the 1960s. I retraced my steps and finally I concluded the car was gone. I couldn't understand it. I immediately began to worry something had happened to Carolina.
I noticed sitting on some porch steps abutting the sidewalk about 20 plastic video cassette boxes from Blockbuster Video. It looked as if some boxes contained video tapes and some were empty. I knew those boxes had been in my car. Obviously someone had thrown the cases out of the car. I immediately began to worry. That didn't' sound like something Carolina would have done. I looked more closely and I also saw three spiral notebooks of mine. I knew Carolina wouldn't throw those out and just leave them. Obviously she had been kidnapped.
The worst feeling I could imagine crashed over me. I had left Carolina behind and she had been kidnapped. I didn't know what to do next. I thought perhaps fingerprints would be on the boxes. I should probably call the police, but I knew the police had a policy of waiting a day or two in cases of missing persons before doing anything. So the police probably wouldn't do anything.
I glanced at my notebooks to see if writing was in them -- it was. I became worried the police might read my writing and find something tending to incriminate me, but that didn't much worry me. My main concern was finding Carolina.
I could imagine her being raped right now. I could imagine three thugs jumping in the car and I could see her sad face. Thinking of her being in their hands was a terrible terrible feeling.
Copyright 2005 by luciddreamer2k@gmail.com
