In the ruins of a soccer arena

I was on vacation in China or Central Asia. The dream began as if I was watching a documentary, a parchment map showing where I was. Looking at the map, I sensed I knew areas in which I could find gold.

I was on a rectangular plateau with short but browned grass. The drop-offs seemed very steep. The narrator said “Notice anything strange? If a ball goes out of bounds, one may have a bit of trouble getting it back.” I realized that this was a soccer field and further that it was the ruins of what was once an indoor soccer field. It looked like pictures of bombed out churches in Eurpose after WW II.

By and underneath a clump of building refuse and what had once been a large bush, frogs jumped around in the moisture. As I was looking at them, the soccer field became a bedroom from my childhood and the area with the frogs turned into my footlocker but without the top. It had been open for a long time and had water and rocks and sticks and sand in it. There were baby frogs in it. I thought some of my frogs must have escaped and began to thrive in the chest.

Still in Asia, I saw my mom vacuuming a shag rug in the hall. I asked her if she was distraught that she was having church circle that morning. She didn’t answer but turned towards me and bent her neck behind her back so it looked like she didn’t have a head. She was dressed like an Amish woman with a shawl and her shoulders were unnaturally square. It was terrifying.

"I think I’m asleep in my bed," I said out loud to myself in the dream. I was able to wake myself up by screaming.