Strange Prophecies

I had a dream that started with my parents house, being a small, prefab home in a field or some rural, agricultural place. A friend of mine from back home lived next to us. A great journey was about to take place, in which I left that nice, pastoral place, and found myself up in the north with my little sister and fathers family. A French woman had trained a reindeer, which made me extremely sad because the animal was obviously unhappy. After trekking out of the snow, I found myself in an inflatable boat, with Fiona (my sister) sleeping in the back. I was obviously in the San Juan islands, coming down to the mainland of Washington. The water was shallow, so the deep green blue of the sea floor was quite vivid, and I could see a starfish and yellow flounder on the bottom. It was large for a flounder, and I felt sad because I knew some fisherman would catch it and take it for the thin fillet off its backside.

We passed under some strange developments; industrial shipping yards, shrouded in fog mingled with New England style houses, all put right under the new Tacoma Narrows bridge, which appeared a lot larger then it actually is. We silently passed through several marinas and seemingly abandoned tourist boats, all full of noisy tourists who obviously had no respect for the place they were visiting. My though was "If you lived here, you'd be in HELL by now". Dream jokes are much more funny in the dream then in waking life.

I finally got Fiona to where she needed to go and I then returned home myself. In this dream world, there were no cars, but rather there were little luge pads that you sat on, and that would go at great speed to your destination. (You had minimal control over them, mainly minor directional controls, but speed was automated.)

I arrived back home, and I somehow had a horse friend waiting for me. A horse, but a person IN a horse. Very handy. It was night time, and a guest had arrived. They wanted to see the Pacific Northwest for what it really is, so we took him to the Olympic National Forest. We got on the luge pads, went a in a rout that I had never seen before to the Tacoma Narrows bridge (which is in the complete wrong direction of the Olympics), I saw the boats and shipping yards in the mist, commented on what it would be like to live there, and finally ended up in the high, green mountains. There were large tracts of land that had been removed and clear-cut, which made an irregular pattern on the otherwise very organic looking hills.

To my horror, the Olympics had become something like Yosemite; full of polluting assholes and ignorant Americans; annoying church groups and screaming kids. This was most disgraceful. As we hiked up to one of the waterfalls, I could see in the distance that a large computer hacking group had left their mark on the hill on the other side of the valley, as they had somehow changed the color of the trees to a little less intense green, to make an anarchy sign, and write on the hillside: "Bringing hacking to where it belongs". Apparently these anarchist hackers had brought their work here, and were camped out in the forest.

I started getting more and more frustrated, and ended up picking up litter everywhere and yelling at random people to pickup their shit. Finally, I came to a high, vertical rock face that overlooked the entire Olympic National park, and with an overwhelming sadness and rage welling up in me; the fish, the oceans, the reindeer, I woke up.

Usually dreams are subtle and cryptic in their messages; plowing through the subconscious murk and catacombs to collect random bits of information and synthesize it into something visual and recognizable (or not) in a dream world. If there is a hidden, cryptic message in this dream, I missed it completely, as I was fairly overwhelmed with the upfront, not so subtle messages.

I'm looking forward to going home. I'm looking forward to being in the most beautiful, pristine place I know, and I'm looking forward to doing whatever I can to keep it that way.

Why is it such a difficult thing for humans these days, prevention? Preparation? Has the value of sustainability has been lost on us somehow? People look at our beautiful Pacific Northwest and say "OHHH MY GAAAAHHD ITS SOOO PRETTYY! HERB, LETS MOVE HERE" and so they do, they move here and move into Bainbridge island or even worse, start invading the San Juan islands and because it's so beautiful, the demise of all thats good and wonderful about the place we live will get bogged down by people who think it'll last forever and who think their actions have no impact.

I don't care about the great investment you made in Santa Monica and how what you're getting in the Seattle area will be such a deal compared to what you've got down in California, the fact is that this shit is going to RUIN this place I came from, and like a plague of locusts, property mongers and opportunist investors will drive taxes and rates through the room, resources plummet, pollution plagues the ecosystem and throws the whole area into collapse and we're left with an overdeveloped, under-managed, commercial orgy. Bend Oregon went through the same thing; now it has no character left at all. Now, you might argue that thats what Bend needed, as it was a fairly depressed place with little or no commerce. But yuppified and asshole GenXer's in track suits and BMW's running around is hardly better. What little character was there, depressed as it was, has vanished into the vapid wastes of what we'd call a strip mall town.

This affect is happening rampantly on the East coast and New England, I fear. The Southwest Pennsylvania area; a GORGEOUS, picturesque vision of 18th and 19th century life, reminiscent of England and Ireland, seemingly getting swallowed whole by the enormous claw that is land developers and franchise owners.

Lets think about these words... "Development" and "Progress".

According to etymonling.com, the root of progress is defined as:
"progress (n.)
1432, "a going on, action of walking forward," from O.Fr. progres, from L. progressus (see progression). Figurative sense of "growth, development, advancement to higher stages" is from 1603. The verb is attested from c.1590 in the lit. sense, 1610 in the fig. sense."

"Advancement to higher stages". I only with that was happening.

"develop (v.)
1656, "unroll, unfold," from Fr. developper, replacing Eng. disvelop (1592, from M.Fr. desveloper), both from O.Fr. desveloper, from des- "undo" + veloper "wrap up," of uncertain origin, possibly Celt. or Gmc. Modern figurative use is 18c. The photographic sense is from 1845; the real estate sense is from 1890. Development first attested 1756."

unroll, unfold, undo... All sounding pretty nasty for what developers would want us to believe is a pretty happy word.

If I may paraphrase, from my limited experience and knowledge in the world, the word on the street in the hippy era 1960's was "I want to change the world!". In the 70's, the focus was much more inward, "Me" oriented and nurturing in a feminine way. 80's, (again, if you choose to look at the popular media generalization) it was "Moneyyyy!" and the 90's ushered in the "advanced" idea of "Quality of Life". So what's our cliché for the beginning of the 21st century?

Personally, I am drawn to the quote said by Mahatma Ghandi, "Be the change you wish to see in the world". Which is also about creating abundance in your own reality, and in your overwhelming mirth, self esteem, energy and overflowing power, you will no doubt positively effect change around you. From the inside, out. This dream also reaffirms this idea; I am leaving the Netherlands, (a place that is foreign on the deepest of levels to me, not just superficial ones) and coming back to the place I know best, the place that raised me. This is a good opportunity, a good omen.

Hopefully I can find some kind of work to do with animals back home, and maybe get involved in some meaningful, local activism.

I can't just let the Pacific Northwest fall to the forces of evil and the Almighty Dollar.

Let me know what you think, suggest, recommend.

Immerse your soul in love :)

-e