3.22.12

 I was following around characters from my childhood. Half of it took place in a paradisaical city. The other half took place in the deepest trench in the ocean, which is so hard to get to and so hard to survive in it is almost like it's on another planet. Also, it isn't just dark there, it is SCARY dark. It is the farthest away and most disconnected from human kind you could possibly get while still on this earth. Another interesting thing is that about halfway through the dream there was a beach where childhood memories washed up.

3.22.12

I'm not really sure how it starts out. But our main character is Belle, and she is in a big, beautiful city along a coastline. This place is so nice, it clearly doesn't belong on this planet. Everything about it is vivid, the sky, the trees, flowers, fountains, mountains, the ocean, the breeze. It is bustling, sparkling, full of happy people. A very heavenly place, charming,  advanced, the best of everything. Crowded yet still very clean. Belle is looking for Beast. She doesn't care about the beautiful city. She just wants to find Beast.
I guess I'm following her around, helping her look.

So anyway, we're out looking for him in this city. Ariel (The Little Mermaid), comes out from an alleyway and catches us. She tells Belle that she knows where Beast is. He was at the bottom of the sea, at the bottom of the very deepest and darkest trench. She had seen his castle when she was coming out of the ocean. And he was still alive inside his inside.

But the ocean is huge, how are we going to find him in there? And if it's in the very darkest part of the ocean, where not even a drop of light light can reach, how will we reach it?

So Ariel decides to help us a little bit. We go to the coast.

The shorline is littered with childhood relics.  Washed up from the sea is the Hat from the Cat in the Hat. The spinning wheel from Sleeping Beauty. A telescope. The game of Jumanji.  Glass slippers. A mirror. Various other familiar items. Finally we come accross what looks like a big yellow boat, covered in seaweed, burried and upside down in the sand. It must represent the Yellow Submarine, because as I come near it I gradually start hearing the song by the Beatles. The three of us dig it out of the sand, brush off the seaweed, flip it over and push it into the water. Then we sail off.

My dream does a hyper-jump at this point.

**Curling out of the darkness are the black spires of Beast's castle. Shadows slither by in the darkness, with ocassional ghostly flickers from the eels and angler fish. At this point in the dream Ariel is gone.
Now we're inside the castle. I don't know how we made it in. It is completely dry inside. The air is still and dead. The drowning blackness outside the castle is nothing compared to the darkness inside. Belle wonders if we should light some torches, but I say no, that would use up our oxygen. The cursed servants from the Disney movie are there, but they are just dead objects, inanimate and lifeless.

Now I am gone and it is just Belle.

She finds Beast. He's curled up in his room, miserable. He won’t look at her, or talk to her. He just stares right through her. He refuses to see what is really there. He is convinced that she is dead. He doesn't believe that any of this is real. He is inconsolable, irrational, and hopeless.

I'm back now, as a disembodied voice. I say that as long as he thinks this way his castle will continue to stay planted at the bottom of the ocean and he will be stuck here forever. In the silence of the dark, as a sad miserable creature all by himself. This makes Belle so sad. She knows the real Beast. She can see flickers of his old human self. She knows who he really is, even if he, or no one else does.
We do another hyper-jump.

We're back at the city, looking down at it. From this view it looks a lot like Rio de Janiero from the Christ the Redeemer statue. Ariel is there on top of the hill and gives Belle some goggle-binoculars and tells her that she can spot evil with them. Belle zooms in on the city and looks at the crowds. There are moving silhouettes scattered throughout the crowd, pure black, people shaped, solid shadows among the regular people. The crowd can see the shadows, but they don't realize that they're shadows. They just think that they are all ordinary people.

Belle spots a black Beast shaped shadow wandering through the city. There he is! We rush into the city and catch up with him there.

Now it's only Belle and Beast. They are back in the underwater castle, walking together down a hallway, talking. She managed to get him up on his feet. As they move and talk the castle starts to float up, off the ocean floor. As I'm watching, I'm thinking about the servants and wondering if they'll get their bodies back. They stop at a piece of furniture and open the cupboard, checking on something. There is an electric meat slicer inside. It turns on and makes a sound like a drill. Belle slams the cupboard door shut. This person who was turned into a meat slicer must have been a bad influence in Beasts life because Belle locks the cupboard door.

By the time they get to the kitchen sunlight is starting to shine through the windows and Beast is back to his old, princely, human self. All of the servants of the castle are in the kitchen, human, happy to see him, blinking in the sunlight, and not really sure what happened. Outside the castle is a beautiful village, surrounded by forest and filled with villagers who missed the castle and are so glad that it's back.  Beast conquered his depression, the castle is back to working order, and everyone is happy. The end.