Bridge of dreams

A recent post on a friend's blog detailed a dream she had involving a bridge.
Coincidentally, her dream reminded me of one I had more than a decade ago that also involved a bridge.
This was the most powerful, profound dream I've yet had in my life, coming as it did at a time of turbulence and, unbeknownst to me then, transition.
I was living in Philadelphia and was stuck in a job I hated, mired in my personal life and unsure of what to do to extricate myself from this rut.
Luckily, I wrote down the dream immediately upon waking from it and added it as an entry in the journal I was keeping.
I try to keep its message fresh in my mind all these years later.
Here is the text of it, edited only for style and grammar:


"Monday, Jan. 10, 1994

Perhaps the most noteworthy event of the weekend was a dream I had this morning at around 5:45.
I think it was set in Kutztown [in Berks County, Pa., where I lived quite happily from 1980-85] or on the way to Kutztown ...

Anyway, among the details of the dream I remember was walking into a freeway-style diner and asking for directions to Kutztown. I was on foot. The waitress told me the way and I walked out the door.

I was on top of a very steep hill, and I had to get to the bottom of this hill ... to proceed to Kutztown.
Something resembling roller coaster tracks, complete with the ... framework, went straight down the hill. Unlike a roller coaster, though, there were no dips or anything. [The tracks] just went straight down this very steep hill at a steep angle.

Parallel to the tracks and attached to them was a lower level that consisted of a slatted walkway, sort of like the walkway across the Brooklyn Bridge but much narrower.

I didn't want to walk down the roller coaster tracks because I was afraid a train might come, so I climbed down to the walkway. As I started down ... the walkway, it began to fall apart. Each time I'd try to get a handhold, it would crumble and fall away. Every time I put even a little pressure on the floorboards, they'd break and fall away.

I started to panic, but then I heard myself telling myself to calm down, that the situation was surmountable if I kept a level head and remained calm.

It was at this point that I decided to climb up to the level of the roller coaster tracks. It didn't seem like too difficult a climb, perhaps 4 or 5 feet. ... I had just grabbed hold and was preparing to hoist myself up when I woke to my alarm clock. I don't know if I ever made it.

This wasn't a nightmare ... in that I didn't wake up in a cold sweat or with a palpitating heart. It wasn't a particularly unpleasant dream -- what I remember of it -- especially once I told myself not to panic prior to attempting to climb up to the tracks ...

Not in a very, very long time have I had a dream that seemed to relate ... so eerily well to my circumstances. ... [I think one of the messages is that] I don't have to look nearly as far for a way out (a new job?) as I think I do; it's running right beside me."

***

Within about two months of this dream, I was fired from that job I so hated. I got a new job that May, and within a year I was bound for a new life in Japan.