Dream Description

Sometimes a dream doesn't seem quite as amazing once you've had a day to think about it, but my dream of the night before last still had some interesting features. Let me run it down for you.

I was at the brand-new "Museum of Cultural Perception" in a major East Coast city. The museum was a lot like a science museum--lots of hands-on exhibits, not meant to demonstrate the bias of cultural perceptions, so much as encourage them. Small myths about sub-cultures, the environment, etc.

The museum culminated around a central hall, with a large domed ceiling, not unlike the Pantheon in Rome. In the center of the hall, there was a massive bonfire burning, with flames lapping the ceiling, and going up through a hole (like the Pantheon). Into this bonfire, the museum goers were throwing the bodies of various mammals, mostly dead or dying. I saw a father encouraging his two children to lift a dead seal carcass to throw into the fire.

I left the museum, and outside was a giant truck fashioned into a Slurpie machine on wheels, with big hoses through which they were dispensing free Slurpie, in some horrible promotional red-green color. The operators were wearing space suits with domed helmets, and were having trouble operating the hoses.

I walked down the block with a friend, and we heard loud explosions, and turned around to see the museum blowing up, in various small blasts of flame and debris, probably twenty or so small localized blasts from all over the facade of the museum. Then I remembered we had left two friends behind in the building, who had wanted to see one last exhibit. We were going to go back to look for them, but before we did, I sent several text messages from my phone to tell anyone who heard about the bombing (because it was definitely a bombing, in my dream-mind) that I was okay.

And, scene.