I’m in a hotel room having a chastening argument with my father about a broken ornament.
The item in question is a hefty piece of carved and painted folk art. It features something approximating the segmented design of a totem pole, but with the rough dimensions of a large baguette.
I’ve managed to accidentally break the head off this strange object. It had, until that point, been a tasteful bit of interior decoration.
It’s the second time I’ve made this kind of mistake in recent memory. As a result, my father’s disappointment and exasperation is compounded. (My family seems to have an adjoining hotel room with my parents.)
Although in the dream I retain my real-life status as a married father, within the dramatis personae of this little argument, I seem to be fulfilling the same role as my young daughter.
I’m cast as the rueful offspring, subjected to the same impotent frustrations my own child presumably experiences when she’s arguing with me.
Regression to childhood
This dynamic reacquaints me with a maddening sensation. It’s the feeling that arises when you screw up in exactly the way your parents warned you against, or even predicted you might. (“If you’re not careful you’re going to spill that. See. What did I just tell you?”)
Part of your frustration is the cosmic injustice of your parents being proven right, almost immediately.
It gives mothers and fathers the false impression that they really know best. It feels like your destiny is inescapable.
Maybe this is when we get our first inkling that free will might be an illusion.
Somehow it feels typical for me to have broken this rustic ornament. It was written into the script, just as it would be for Frank Spencer.
Except this isn’t actually typical behaviour for me. In reality, ‘typical’ behaviour would be failing to memorise directions, or not owning the appropriate shoes for a formal event.
I try to rationalise the accident to my dad and explain why this time it’s different, because there were extenuating circumstances.
(In this case: throwing the ornament onto a hotel bed, in an attempt to separate a couple of large salamander-like creatures that were scurrying around on the duvet.)
Tesla Coil Basilica
Later I leave the hotel room for a walk and find myself several stories up, on a brightly lit viewing platform over a massive atrium.
Yet from this vantage point, I’m looking up, not down. I’m gazing at the tip of what appears to be a vast, glowing Tesla coil. It rises through the open-air portion of the atrium, continuing beyond the roofline of the building into the late evening sky.
Bolts of electricity discharge into the heavens from the tip of the coil. It is awesome to behold.
The building looks like the architectural offspring of Minas Tirith and the Griffith Observatory
In terms of stature, the Tesla coil is probably inspired by the fictional weaponised version that I grew to love and fear in my teens, while playing through endless campaigns on Command & Conquer: Red Alert.
The retro-video-game vibe continues as I turn away from this electrifying spectacle and descend, making my way out of the building.
It feels like playing an old FPS shooter, like Quake or Doom.
In those games you invariably began each level deep within the warrens of some alien location. Sometimes you could work your way out to the exterior. Then you could turn back to see the extraordinary deserted structure you’d been negotiating your way through. And it might be unimaginably strange – not how you imagined it at all.
That’s the case here: the building housing the Tesla coil looks like the architectural offspring of Minas Tirith and the Griffith Observatory.
Floodlights at the base of the structure magnify its striking beauty. It looks less menacing than a cathedral yet somehow more regal than a planetarium.
(Coincidentally, the Griffith Observatory actually houses a Tesla coil. Despite having visited the building in recent years, I had no conscious recollection of the exhibit. I only discovered its existence post somnium.)
Follow the river
This vast, unfamiliar building sits atop a hillside. After taking a long look back, I turn and begin to descend toward the town below. It appears as a carpet of distant lights running in rivulets through a valley, beneath the moonlight.
I’m following a winding pathway, letting momentum propel me effortlessly forward at a pleasant pace, my footsteps skipping rhythmically on the paving stones.
The pathway begins to skirt close to a narrow river. This water feature seems a little too good to be true, as if it’s been landscaped into the hill to make the environment look even more picturesque.
It is fairly dark now – evening has turned to night. I seem to have both the pathway and the river to myself.
Still, it isn’t creepy or unsettling. There’s the rush of water over and around rocks, the soft flapping of broad leaves in the trees, the twinkle of the distant lights in the town ahead.
The location feels affluent, like a beautifully designed holiday destination somewhere in the Americas.
Then I notice that I’m not alone: there are seals in the river.
The seal activist
The sight of the seals excites me. I saw Atlantic Grey Seals last year on the North Norfolk coast.
Watching their heads materialise periodically, out beyond the shallows, was hypnotic. When they ventured to the shoreline, they looked like excited dogs enjoying a dip. Then they ducked under frothing breakers and retreated back into the depths.
I subsequently laboured on a blog post about that experience before deciding it was too nugatory to publish.
But now that I’ve happened upon seals in such a riveting location, perhaps I can gather enough material to bulk out that abandoned piece.
There is evidently a part of my brain that is always editorialising. Months ago I saw a waitress fall over in a dream and rushed to document the moment. I’m constantly panning for gold, even as I sleep.
Now one of the river seals is making an unfamiliar noise. At first it sounds more like a cawing sound. But after a moment I realise the noise is human in origin.
Someone is trying to get my attention
Out of the blackness I see him in the water ahead of me in the shallow riverbed: a man sitting on a rock ledge at the approach to a small waterfall. He seems to be communing with the seals.
He’s wearing a dark wetsuit covered in additional gear – pockets and pads and velcro. He’s kitted out like a military frogman.
Still, he looks somewhat comical and awkward: overdressed, sitting in the shallow water with his legs straight out in front of him like a kid.
This must be his hobby. Twitchers can look pretty weird too, I guess.
The bore in the riverbed
I realise he’s trying to direct me around the river seals, even though I’ve yet to venture closer to them.
In fact, I haven’t deviated from the paved public path running alongside the river. Apparently, in the darkness he’s miscalculated both my relative position and my intentions.
His tone is kind of annoying from the start. He’s already making a big deal of it, as if I’m about to stray into a minefield, when in fact I simply stopped to observe the seals from a distance.
Soon he’s standing up in the water, making more noise, advising me loudly. And clearly I’m not responding swiftly or effusively enough for his liking.
There is something deeply unfashionable and vaguely familiar about him
“I’m not even going near the seals!” I shout back at him. “Can you just leave me alone?”
But he keeps on going on about the importance of protecting these river creatures. I find myself getting really angry with him
“You’re being so officious!” I point out. “People like you ruin things”
His attitude reminds me of the harbour seal activists who were at war with their ‘shared-use’ counterparts near San Diego a few years back. These people get so caught up in the cause that they take things too far. They become self-appointed wildlife sheriffs.
Now he’s out of the water and coming towards me. We’re both indignant and angry at each other now.
He’s much taller than me, but not powerfully built, and therefore not particularly intimidating. I catch a hint of a rural accent: Norfolk or West Country. There is something deeply unfashionable and vaguely familiar about him.
Now the guy is bloviating about permits and I’m telling him that I don’t appreciate being lectured. I’m just a bystander and I already know well enough about keeping my distance from the seals.
I can’t get this controlling bore to understand that simple fact. He isn’t listening at all.
