The City in my Head: A Reoccuring Dream

Hi! 

This blog is going to be a little different from what I usually talk about. Instead of looking at music, we’re looking at the world inside my head. A little product of my own imagination, a part of the alternate universe I visit at night.

Over the past year or so, I’ve unintentionally created this entire city in my head that’s become a reoccurring dream for me. I’ve been frequenting it a lot as of recently, and I’ve actually started to find a lot of comfort in it. I just want to share a bit of this with other people, as it’s something that I find really cool and want to keep track of.  

I’m well aware that this sounds totally absurd, but I can’t control what goes on when I’m not awake. If I’m going to keep having these dreams, I’m definitely going to try to make something out of it and have a good time with them. I don’t fully understand how these dreams work or how the city manages to keep building on itself every time I go back, so I also want to take note of everything I already know. I don’t want to end up forgetting anything, and I definitely want to be able to acknowledge any major updates.

(Sorry if the structure of this is strange and a little difficult to follow, this was originally a huge paragraph in my notes app that I’m just now attempting to put into bullet points) 

Here we go:

-This city doesn’t have a name. It’s not referred to as anything by anyone, and there are no signs that hint to anything. It’s just a city in a world that isn’t ours.  

-It’s always nighttime. The sun never comes out, and we don’t need it because there are so many lights coming from buildings and windows. It’s the most beautiful part of the entire city. 

-Instead of streets and cars, we use roller coasters to get around and are always above the ground. 

-The main icons of this city are these huge billboards on the main road, they’re everywhere you turn. Aside from those, other icons include a building shaped like a castle that’s always super fun to ride through, a Legoland, a huge LED sign of a chili pepper advertising a restaurant and a deluxe Margaritaville resort. I have absolutely no idea how any of these got in there, but they’re the only places that also exist in the real world. They can all be seen from the main road, and are located right in the city center.

-The buildings are super tall, wide and entirely see through, unless it’s a house or an apartment. Rooftop pools are extremely common. 

-Everyone is super friendly, and those in houses, apartments and pools love to make noise and wave at those riding the roller coasters. Everyone on the roller coasters must wave back, as you can sense that it would be extremely rude not to.

-A lot of the city and see-through buildings are themed after space or the tropics.

- If you travel to the north of the city, you’ll find a massive old-fashioned hotel. While you can argue that the main road is the centerpiece of this city, this hotel also holds a ton of significance. 

-Once you enter the hotel, you’re greeted with the sight of escalators coming at you from every angle. They all lead to the lobby, which consists of nothing but a set of stairs in the center. 

-After climbing the stairs, you’ll be greeted with multiple hallways that you can walk down. You can’t see what’s at the end of any of them, you just have to pick one based on intuition. 

-Some hallways will lead you to fancy bars, ballrooms or other hallways lined with doors. When you open one, you’ll either find a hotel room or a staircase. These are considered the normal passageways.

-Other hallways will lead you through wide, hollow, abandoned, almost liminal-like spaces where unidentified beings live. They’ll mutter things to you that you can’t make out, and you get the feeling that it’d be rude to try deciphering it. 

Sometimes the beings are visible to the eye, sometimes they aren’t. I went down a path last night and saw one, it seemed to be a head and a torso attached to a wall, but I wasn’t able to get a good look. I’ve literally never been able to get a good look at any of these beings. 

Those abandoned spaces do tend to leave you on edge, as they never stop coming after you initially walk through one. However, you always remain calm, and can never become excessively stressed out or scared. 

-There does seem to be a combination of both a normal passageway and an abandoned space; a science center, with three tablets attracted to the wall that display NASA imagery and cellular division.

(If you have claustrophobia, watch out for this part) There’s a slide attached to the wall outside the science center. If you go down it, you’ll be spat out into a very small space where you have to squeeze through a super tight passageway that I’ve only seen young children, two supervisors and myself successfully fit through. Doing this will get you into another wide hallway. If you walk straight and turn to the left, you’ll find another tight space that you have to squeeze through, which is so much worse than the other one. It literally makes you feel like you’re being crushed and slowly suffocating. The best way I can describe this process is comparing it to extreme cave diving. 

If you can make it through without panicking, you’ll find a little space with a small screen nailed to the center of the wall. It plays cartoons and educational documentaries for kids.

-Across from the science center, there’s a movie theatre which is decorated futuristically, but the actual movie rooms are covered by fly nets and make you feel like you’re hiding under a fort with chairs underneath it. The movies are shown how they were years ago, seemingly to provide nostalgia for the older generation.

-The movie theatre also serves as an archive hall. You can run down multiple aisles of these huge poster boards for old movies that they’ve played in the theatre over the years (I got VERY lost in here once) 

-There’s a church in the hotel as well, but the doors to it are always closed and my dream self has never bothered with trying to get inside. 

-Attached to the hotel, there’s a boardwalk with flashy restaurants that focus more on having a fun external appearance more than the food, which I’m still yet to try (I did see some hush puppies floating in a soapy mop bucket once, so I don’t think my dream self is in a rush to have anything there)

-The food is never a normal color, there’s always some kind of dye in it. They have dye in every color of the rainbow, I’ve seen blue hamburgers and purple mac and cheese. If the ban on Red 40 were to happen in that city, it would singlehandedly cause its collapse.

-The boardwalk is on the waterfront, and I’d assume you can walk on the beach. I’m almost always with people in this city, and very rarely alone unless I’m walking down one of those ominous spaces.

-Last time I was in this city, I was speaking with an employee at the hotel, trying to figure out the secrets to knowing which hallway will lead you down what pathway. 

-I try to hold on to memories of the people I meet here and who they are, but it’s hard. A girl I once met spent a long time begging me to remember her and I still see her clearly in my mind, grabbing onto my arm on the boardwalk in front of the beach, short brown hair, light skin, about my height, but I can’t put a name to her. 

-Only one person I’m acquainted with in the real world slid into this city once, and I did start to stress about it a little. Fortunately, I was able to realize I was dreaming and looked at my hand for confirmation. My dream self then realized that they don’t exist, and moved on.

-According to that logic, the real world that we’re in right now isn’t a thing in this city. The people in that world solely exist in that world, and the people in this world solely exist here. I’m just a mix of both.

So yeah, that’s where we’re currently at. I really want to elaborate on this city/world while I’m awake, but I’d much rather go based off of on my dreams and see how everything progresses without using my waking mind. If anything else happens, I’ll definitely come make some updates here!