überlin

The Berlin of last night’s dream was a war zone, under siege from some unidentified force.

It was now, not then – not during the war we shouldn’t be mentioning – and it was the same city in which Zoë and I now live, but only recognisable in that twisted, transitory way of dreams. The ubiquitous graffiti was sprayed across foreign surfaces, and the now-familiar snow lay on hitherto unmapped streets. If it wasn’t for my narrator’s certainty that this was undoubtedly Berlin, I would have sworn it was Baghdad, pieced together from the grainy footage of a thousand news reports.

Despite our bewilderment at having been dropped into this situation without explanation, despite the language barrier feeling as tangible as the concrete walls of our barricade, as locals gave up the pretense of speaking English in favour of efficient communication with their comrades, Zoë and I seemed an integral part of some kind of resistance. What or who we were fighting against, we never found out, but trapped in that cold, starkly floodlit blockade, waiting for death, The Resistance felt all too real.

Last night, in a dream within a dream, Berlin burned to the ground. Somehow I witnessed this horrific event first-hand and survived, but thankfully don’t remember the details because – still in my dream – I woke up.

I then turned on the TV to discover that New York City had actually met with the same fate. My brother was there, acting as a kind of arson anthropologist, examining the strangely pristine skeletons left behind – like Gormley statues stripped down to their bare bones.

Then I woke up.

Zoë dreamed of apocalypse and mass murder.

Read into all this what you will.