Somewhere around 1991 or 1992...
Somewhere around 1991 or 1992 - I'm not sure, because my journal files from that time are locked behind clever passwords I�ve since forgotten - I had a dream. The dream contained vivid images, accompanied by emotional impressions so potent that I�ve remembered it to this day. The image I remember most...the one that was foremost in my mind when I awoke...involved Interstate 95, the highway that ran near the town where I lived in New Jersey at the time. I-95 runs north/south, and is one of the major arteries that leads to New York City from New Jersey and other points south.
In this dream, I was looking northward along a familiar section of I-95 that ran near where I lived, from a slightly elevated position, as though I were standing on an overpass. The northbound lanes of the highway were nearly empty, but the southbound lanes were packed with slow-moving traffic. All of the crowded automobiles had their lights on. My impression was that they were fleeing, evacuating, heading south to escape. And, indeed, northward there lay a great darkness: an ominous, roiling, clouded darkness that seemed to stretch across the horizon. It filled my dream self with dread.
Prominently placed in this darkness, looming upwards and disappearing into the clouds, were two tall, square towers. There were fighter aircraft flitting around them, flying into and out of the clouds.
At the time, and for many years afterwards, I interpreted those tall towers disappearing into the smoky darkness as the legs of some giant, menacing creature or robot, something archetypal and biblical, a leviathan with the bulk of its massive body lost to view overhead. In the dream, its legs were massive things, that dwarfed me as an observer, and I had the impression of motion, as though they were slowly striding from the north towards me, bearing menace and danger.
It was only last week that it occurred to me: two towering structures. Dark clouds, swirling like smoke. Fighter aircraft. All key elements of that day in September.
Now, if that isn�t just downright odd, I don't know what is. I had this dream long before I lived in New York, and long before I worked near or even visited the World Trade Center.
There�s something that bothers me. Please allow me to indulge in some Mulderesque speculation, just for a moment. The towers: accounted for. The dark smoke: accounted for. The jet fighters: accounted for. But that scene of evacuation, the thousands of cars fleeing from the north, their headlights on to pierce the darkness from which they emerged...that hasn't happened. Not yet, anyway.
Let�s all hope I'm a crank with a vivid imagination.
