Knowledge and the wild things

I had a very strange dream a couple nights ago. It was amusing, bizarre, and beautiful in the way that only dreams can be. It illustrates how dreams can be the brain's creative way of sorting through all the information we cram into it, consciously or subconsciously.

I dreamt that the wild things were the caretakers of the trees of knowledge. All I remember of the dream is this: I am deep in the bowels of what I initially think is the earth, yet I soon realize that we are in a different place, like the Wood between the Worlds from the Narnia books. We are in a cavernous space, looking up at the giant roots of trees, pushing through the ceiling. They are unbelievably large, like mountains, beyond the scale of comprehension, and I feel impossibly small while looking up at them. This sense of scale does not bother me.

As is the way of dreams, I never see the wild things, though I know they are present. While it’s funny that the creatures from Sendak’s book “Where the Wild Things Are” should show up in my dream, as the caretakers of these ponderous trees, no less!, somehow they added a sense of gravitas to my dream. Their wildness meant they were dangerous, and I should take care in this place where the trees of knowledge reside.

I never find out what the wild things do to trespassers. All I am left with is the image of those giant roots suspended in a vast space, and the profound sense of awe I felt while gazing at those ponderous roots far above me, and a niggling sense of foreboding, an intuition that I should not tarry long in this place, no matter how heartbreakingly beautiful the trees are.

And that was the dream. There's no hidden meaning behind it, no suppressed emotions trying to get out. Just the hint of a story.

I like those kinds of dreams.