I had a vivid dream this morning about death and destruction, perhaps as some weird dream way to continue processing the thoughts from yesterday. I was also affected by the many images of destruction from the storms and tornadoes in Atlanta yesterday.

In the dream, I was in some sort of high-rise building with three or four other people that I didn’t recognize. We had gathered to play 45s on an old record player – the kind that opened up like a box.

As the theme from Scooby-Doo was playing in the background (really), I looked out the window to see that a huge crane was trying to add an entire wall to the top of an unfinished building. It was so high in the air, and the crane was using some sort of wire to hold the whole thing up. Across my whole line of sight, I observed several other buildings were unfinished at the top, as though an entire city were being constructed upwards in a never-ending project.

At first, the wall – really a total wall, with appliances and everything – swung out a little too much. Then it seemed that the crane lost control of the trajectory altogether. The hanging wall knocked some bits off another building, and it seemed to create a domino situation. I could see big bits of the jigsawed building fall down. People down on the street were screaming.

Now I was on the fifth or sixth floor instead of something like the 20th, sitting in some sort of darkened restaurant. I could see that everything around us had become unstable. Everything was trembling and then shaking, like in an earthquake. I felt like a fool, because it seemed that I was somehow over-reacting, but I screamed out, “Run!”

I ran down the stairwell, and got out of the building, and starting running just as fast as I could. My shoes fell off but I kept running. And then, there was a cold shadow over me, and I heard someone shout out, “Goodbye Ralph. I’m sorry!”

I looked up, and a whole building was tipping toward me like a giant tree. The waffle-patterned concrete looked very heavy and dense, and it was already halfway down, falling far too fast to outrun.

I looked up at it and thought, “Well, at least it will be quick.”

And then the building hit the ground, crushing me.

And I felt it, in the way that you can sort of feel things in dreams sometimes. And I lived for another moment or two after that, wondering if I would live long enough to need air, and when my consciousness would be gone.

And I thought, “That wasn’t so bad” – and woke up.

My arm was asleep, and I had a crick in my neck. It was so warm and windy last night that we left a window open.

I looked out my window at the sky behind the big oak trees, and imagined one of those big trees coming down on the house (something I worry about from time to time). An entire building would be better.

I used to have dreams of my own death a couple of times a year. This is the first one I’ve had since my son was born.

Spring flowers are blooming, and the air smells sweet. Glad to be alive.