Wednesday, August 23, 2006

train escape & astro accident

From a two-dream night ...

First we were running through a forest, skipping down overgrown slopes, trying to get away from the wizards who were chasing us. They were wimps, but they could set our clothes on fire from a few hundred feet away, so we didn't want them getting too close. The woods ended at a gorge, crossed only by a narrow railway bridge. We heard the ancient locomotive huffing closer, then leapt out and caught the caboose railing as it rounded a sharp turn. The antique train took us across the gorge and away, and we knew our foes would never pick up the trail.

I don't know what we did to upset them. Apparently just visiting their secretive town was enough to get chased off and set aflame. Anyway, we enjoyed the short train ride, through a tunnel, and dodging the conductor who expected riders to have tickets. Security chased us around the terminal, but we caught another train through some rocky foothills and ended up at a roadside attraction in Arizona. Apparently, we'd parked our cars here about a week ago, got on the little cheezy wild west train ride, and somehow found another dimension ...

===

I was filming a documentary about an astronomer from about 1910, who built an observatory on the roof of his old Victorian house, only to have the roof collapse under the weight and kill his whole family. Only a daughter survived, and the granddaughter still owned the house, now an old lady with the sad story to tell. I found a time capsule beneath a flagstone by the back porch, and it had old photos of obscure scientists, including the great Bernard Apocalypse or Cambridge.

Something about the photos and the man's old notes -- so many nights spent, so many numbers captured, looking for meaning in an infinitely vast universe.

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