Dream #131 Travelling Back through Time

My memory of the photograph. © TBS

Slept like a log for about eight hours. Then, with a start, I was thrust into a dream.

Somebody was showing me a black and white photograph, taken in the early 1900s of a farm house in a prairie. It had been abandoned.

As I was looking at the photograph, a strange feeling overcame me, as if the photograph was showing me what happened after it was taken.

The image took on the quality of an early silent film, but without any music or subtitles.

As I stared at it, a tall fir tree on the left of the picture moved its topmost branches slowly, as an unseen wind gently stroked it.

Gradually, a storm blew, and the tree swayed from side to side, like a ballerina, eventually its topmost branches almost touched the ground next to the house, but it refused to yield.

The picture then changed to winter, a dusting of snow softened the scene, and the little farmhouse stood, foursquare, undamaged.

I looked closely, trying to glean some information, and then, without warning, the house disappeared – completely – without so much as a mark on the ground.

I felt a deep sense of loss, as if something had been taken from me before I could even get to know it.

However, If I thought that was the end, I was mistaken.

Figures arrived from over the hill, on the track that went past where the farmhouse had been. When they got near to the tall fir-tree, they stopped and conversed.

The next instant, the fir-tree was chopped down, a great bonfire was built where the house had stood, and surrounding trees were felled to feed to the flames.

Somehow, from outside the picture, more men arrived and started shooting at the men by the bonfire.

As the gun battle went on, an army truck appeared, the attackers climbed on, but the engine died.

One of the men jumped down, and started winding the handle at the side of the truck which, although moving it forward slowly did nothing to start the engine.

It was at this point that I realised it was not real, and that I had been watching someone else's lucid dream.