The Puzzle Dream

I thought of this as the puzzle dream but it could also be the cookie cutter dream, or the surprise flying dream.

Started, I was younger, in my early twenties, outside, part of a huge crowd of people, all about my age. They were passing out these white pieces that looked like plastic cookie cutters to me. Looking at it, I’m like, “What am I supposed to do with this?” No one close to me had any answers. Like me, they were regarding their piece with confusion.

But playing around with it, because that’s my nature, I discovered that I could make two pieces just by tugging on a side. That caused a new one to slide out while the original’s mass and structure didn’t change. Others were finding this, too. I wanted to know how many one piece could yield and soon found I had ten pieces. What the heck was I to do with them, though?

I thought the pieces were hard but since I could pull one piece out of another, I wondered if they were malleable, so I started twisted them and found, yeah, they were malleable. I could make them bigger or smaller. Someone else suggested, “Try putting them together.” I didn’t see a way at first but kept working it. Suddenly, I found that if I put two pieces edge to edge and then squeezed hard on the joined edge, they’d be one.

I rapidly began making more pieces, putting pieces together, and shaping them into something big. I had no idea what I was making. The shapes just pleased and interested me. What was boring was the color: these were all white, like, bright, refrigerator white. So tedious. I wanted to make them into another color.

A nearby female said something similar and then others spoke up, agreeing. Then a young man kind of gasped and said, “Look!” He’d changed a piece into red. We all asked, “How’d you do that?” He answered, “I don’t know.”

I started looking at mine and thinking as the others still questioned him. Holding a piece, I thought, blue, and it was immediately blue. The female who’d first mentioned the colors did the same, and we started talking about it. Then she and I and two other guys started putting pieces together from different sides, creating a four-sided thing together.

I wanted it bigger. Pulling my pieces back apart and explaining that to the rest, I asked some others to join us. We soon had a group putting pieces together on several sides, creating something big. Someone asked, “What is it?” My first thought was, “It’s a building.” Someone else said that, and another replied, “It’s a building that’s a city.”

Then I said, “No, it’s a spaceship.” I told them, “It’s a multi-generational spaceship so that we can live in space and travel to other parts of the universe.” Questions about it were asked of me and I answered, developing a greater vision of it as I did. People protested that it’s not big enough. I answered, “This is a model so that we can build the real thing after we figure it out.”

Then a man came by and told us, “Stay playing with the blocks.”

First, I didn’t think of them as blocks.

He continued, “Take this. I want you to learn out to use them.”

“Use them for what?” a woman asked.

“To fly,” the man answered.

The things he was passing out while talking were like plastic white shoelaces about ten inches long. Four of them were attached on one flat end so the strings were parallel to one another. I, like others, was skeptical. “We’re going to fly with these?”

“Yes. Twirl them over your head.” The man held up white streamer and twirled it over his head. “Just do it like that.”

I laughed, completely disbelieving of him. While others questioned him, “You twirled it and you’re not flying,” I twirled mine. They were more difficult to twirl than I expected. I kept changing my grip and trying different speeds. Suddenly I took off. As soon as I did, I stopped twirling, surprised by success, and dropped back to the ground. Others had seen and rushed over, demanding, “How did you do that?”

Dream end.