The mat (a dream)

The schoolmaster asked us to gather around Mr. Johnson's Mat. Which was yet unfolded, waiting to be revealed on the floor of the small empty patch of forest. Parents and children alike wondered but also seemed afraid to come a bit closer.

The teacher - a man with short, brown hair in his thirties and cleanshaven - sank down on his haunches, glanced around the group and unfolded the map which was made of some kind of thick plastic and showed no sign of hinches or folds when unfolded.

My first impression - or from the character I played in my dream - was that it vaguely resembled the playing board of Ludo. Because of the different coloured circles. The colours were orange, brown, yellow, blue, red and green. They resembled the different levels of learning from all different children in the school, regardless of age.

The colours matched the different places on the edges of the manmade open place in the woods. Children got assignments from the AI, put their hands on the mat, on a coloured circle that matched the level of difficulty of the question. Thanks to biometrics the software knew which student had answered which question and 'sensed' the answer. The corresponding circle would light up at a right answer and more circles would light up, indicating the number of points the student was rewarded. The student would then walk over to the appropriate spot at the rim of the field. About half a dozen students could simultanously use the mat.

Survive (a dream)

Some sort of giant alien loci had devoured all plantlife on Earth. Unsure if it were the aliens themselves or a genetically engineered lifeform they had unleashed unto the planet. 

Giant tsunami's swept the planet and the largest one hung over Kenia, according to the latest images I had seen on the last available television broadcasts, just before a worldwide shutdown of energy.

The last survivors were packed together in basements, churches, bars, underground stations and other (makeshift) shelters and people started to die from starvation.

All the while I was being tossed around by the winds and water, ocassionaly clinging to flagpoles and lampposts, realizing the end was near but still hoping at least my children would survive.

We could (a dream)

There was a street performer who played a blind character in mime, singing a song with the word 'see' in it. And it was hilarious. In another act he would drink white cava whine. He had black, curly hair and was a Belgian student who also played the trombone in a well known orchestra, as an investigative reporter found out by looking at images at a viewing screen in a studio. The performer told me he had some wine left in this old delivery truck he had painted himself with colourful graffiti. Later he would ask me to film him while he was smoking a cigarette in the back yard of his old university. Which suddenly was my own back yard and on the camera I saw images of my son as a child. 

There was a party we attended. With a lot of young people. My girlfriend in the dream had given me a (black) car she had poorly parked in the garage underneath the venue. On our way to the party (a national celebration, it seemed) we met a couple of which the woman was wearing almost the same outfit as my girlfriend. Including the same keffiyeh. And they both had grey eyes with light grey eye white. Which looked rather unsettling.

The party was no fun as a lot of people were under the influence of different substances. So we decided to leave. When we entered the garage we just saw my car leaving in the distance. It went straight and left and disappeared into the daylight.

We had no choice than to go by bike. My partner had a pillow and a small child on the back of her bike. I asked her for her old slide phone to call my now ex-girfriend. 'No, you can't have more than 1000 sheets of printing paper!', she yelled. I told her that was not what I was calling for. I found out she was driving my car and asked her why. At least she could have called and tell me. No reply.

Later we (my girlfriend? My son? My new friend the performer?) sat in the back of the car of an unknown but in the dream familiar man. He directed our attention to an old and expensive housing project that was never finished and left for Mother Nature to slowly demolish. 'What if we had no jobs, no hobbies, no family. In which would lie life's adventures?', he asked. And I replied: 'In visiting the nearby (I forgot or may have never known the exact name) 'Old white house of Mr. Grey'. At least we could have a pee there.' The driver smiled, put his hands more firmly on the steering wheel and his foot deeper on the gas: 'Yes, we could.'

Surprise (a dream)

To everyone's surprise I literally jumped at the change to be the bike taxi driver for a friend of mine. While she sat in the back of the homemade tricycle (one wheel in the front, two at the rear), she asked outloud who was willing to take the rider's seat and take her wherever she wanted to go. 

Pushing people aside, I grabbed on to the side railings (?), leaned on my arms for a few seconds, defying gravity, dropped unto the seat and started pedaling. Much to the bemusement of my passenger who cried out: 'Yihaw!'

We rode through busy streets, avoiding market stalls and pedestrians. Until we ended up in a quiet neighbourhood of the foreign city. There was a swimming pool. Actually three basins in one building. All not very crowded. I picked one and started a conversation with an elderly lady. She was smoking and simply tossed her finished butt in the water. Much to my surprise.