Yesterday was a dark day but not of my usual sort. Pain of the exaggerated ‘don’t bother me, I’m dying’ breed began around the Sub-occipital muscles and stampeded my skull and my brain’s right hemisphere. Being the whiner I am, I wasn’t happy.

Suffering computer and writing withdrawal contributed to my low tolerance for pain. Hey, I’m STRESSED OUT! Writing on the old Thinkpad reminds me of traveling on an old coal fed steam locomotive. Lot of chug-chug-chug action to open windows, or even change words or write more than thirty characters in Word. Chug-chug-chug. I write in snapshots so I’ll have parallel scenes in development, requiring me to jump between docs. Chug-chug-chug. Looking up something on the intertubes…chug…chug…  Chug.  Chug chug chuuuuggg. Chuuuuugggggggggggg. The computer then paused, let out a gasp and wiped its screen, telling me, “Whoo, this is tough hauling. All up hill to get to the good data.”

So, while back at home, logging changes made and attempting more fixes, I sat back in the office chair, closed my eyes…and napped.

I dreamed during the nap. I was walking on gray asphalt. It was sunny and hot. My shadow was about fifteen degrees off true. Right was part of a bridge’s cement structure. Painted white, it was last touched up a decade or more past and its facade was worn.

All I saw was my shadow, my feet, the asphalt and the cement. Then I drew near the bridge’s end. Ahead was the gravelly dirt shoulder with heavy green weeds and brambles. I stepped off the bridge. While doing so, I looked down and saw I was stepping into a hole between the bridge and shoulder. I fell off into nothing.

Blackness rose before fear shook me awake. Telling my wife about it, she noted the bridge and it’s possible significance, and the fact that I was walking into the unknown, that I didn’t know it, and I was frightened. Yeah, but…isn’t the  future unknown? So aren’t I always walking into the unknown?

So, no simple interpretation arose, but my headache was gone, and that was worth the dream by itself.