12 March 2011

A dangerous construction site

I'm in D's and my apartment, talking to my mother on the phone. I'm trying to think of things to tell her, and I say, "Oh, that building next to us is going up really fast." [In reality, there has been a building site next door to our building since we moved in, but only in the last couple of months has the building actually started to materialise. I keep meaning to mention its rapid growth to my mother on one of our calls.] I'm looking out the window at the building under construction. Two large arcs, halves of an oval, are being lowered into place on the construction site. They look like halves of an arena, lined with tiers. They have a Lego sort of look to them, although they are huge. They have the appearance of shiny, grey, translucent plastic. Then some large oblong thing, sort of like the platform window washers stand on, comes swinging in. There are several guys also suspended high in the air on lines. One guy is meant to catch onto the corner of the platform, but he misses and swings precariously out over nothing. I am terrified. The scene of the platform swinging out and the guy missing getting onto it "replays" once or twice. In the final replay, I can see the guy scramble and manage to get onto the platform. D or I say something like, "That's why the kid is so calm," referring to another guy (who is rather young) who is on another corner of the platform, working away unperturbed even as he clings perilously to the outside of the railing.

*****

Yesterday I listened to Barenaked Ladies's Born on a Pirate Ship which includes "When I Fall," a song with skyscraper window washer imagery. Heights are probably my greatest fear. Even watching movies with scenes at height disturbs me.

I debated about whether to label this dream as "neutral" or "scary." The sight of the guy dangling from the platform was very scary to me within the dream, but no more so than seeing such a thing in real life would have been. The dream itself did not scare or disturb me like a nightmare, so I have decided to leave it as "neutral."

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