First off, I have to say that the latest dream was in no way as dramatic as the previous two. There's no rapidly rising tide and no sea monster. In the beginning, the dream didn't even seem to be taking place near the sea. I worked for someone who lived in a large house and was apparently a wealthy invalid. I was in the role of a personal assistant and went into an upstairs bathroom to check on a bottle of medicine; then I went into my own room, which opened out of it. There was a small desk in front of a tall window, and I opened the drawer.
To my surprise, opening the desk caused the bottom to slide out and tilt down at an angle. There was no glass in the window, though the bottom of the desk drawer appeared to be glass--and its contents were hanging precariously over a rocky cliff that plunged into the ocean about 50 feet below. I could see a man cliff diving from the rocks, and I wanted to slide the bottom of the drawer back in so as not to drop anything into the water. There was a long, cylindrical object on the right side of the drawer, but as if it had a will of its own, the drawer slipped further down, tumbling the contents into the water.
The cliff diver had just made another dive, so he and my projectile hit the water at about the same time. I waited to see him come up, and he did. I was glad I hadn't inadvertently drowned him, but it was a near thing. After that, I noticed other people of various ages swimming nearby, none of whom seemed to have noticed that contents were raining down on their heads from an open window. I hadn't knocked anyone out, but on the other hand, wasn't their carefree attitude a bit surprising? I stood looking in some perplexity at the desk that turned gravity into a launch pad.
In this dream there was no sense of danger to me. I was an actor--though an unwitting one--not a reactor. The ocean posed no threat, I did not mourn the loss of the contents, and I was more concerned with the safety of the people in the water than they appeared to be. Above all, I was mystified by the trick drawer that seemed to have been set up to act as it did. There was an inevitability about the scene and a feeling of a sly sense of humor at work.
If you're interested in setting, I will say that the house, while having a more or less 20th-century look (and an up-to-date bathroom) had the heavy atmosphere of established wealth. I believe I had driven there in my car, which was parked on the street. As for the room with the desk, it was something like Madeline's chamber in Keats's The Eve of St. Agnes, except for the fact that it wasn't winter (or even nighttime), there was no stained glass, and in fact no feeling at all of anything medieval. I'm not sure there was even a bed.
If you're thinking, "That doesn't sound much like Madeline's chamber," all I can say is it must have been the slightly ponderous air of the house, the feeling of looking down from a height, and the unexpected drama of the window treatment. Her window was pretty to look at, but mine was notable for its absence, the difference between a romance and the dream of a modern writer, I suppose. At least I was dry this time.
