The hidden spider

An odd thing happened perhaps 10 or 12 years ago.

I was getting ready to brush my teeth and looked at the tube of toothpaste laying on the counter. It was squeezed quite a bit in the middle, so I decided to move some of the toothpaste from the back toward the front. Instead of picking the tube up, I just pushed at it, probably using my thumb, until the back half of the tube was fairly flattened out and the toothpaste was mostly at the front.

When I picked the tube up, I found a partly crushed spider underneath it.

If I had just picked the tube up like I normally would have done, instead of pushing at it where it lay, the spider, uncrushed and alive, would have most likely been where my fingers would have gone.

Dream - In the Matrix

Almost four months ago, I had a strange dream that had some Matrix-like elements.

In the dream, a series of minor adventures occurred. I kept worrying about a cloud, though, that was off to my left at an angle. It was a dark cloud, almost black, and it had two eyes and two stick-like arms that extended down from it, bent, dividing at the ends into two stick-like fingers or claws. The cloud was pointed out to me by someone in the dream, and I was reminded of it occasionally as the dream progressed.

It was supposed to be approaching me, though it was actually pointed to the side and not right at me, and I never actually saw it move. When I looked at it from time-to-time, it did seem sometimes that it had gotten closer. It seemed to be something dangerous, although I'm not certain in what way, and sometimes I seemed to feel a hunger from it. I was concerned about the cloud coming, but I knew that there was no way to avoid it, that its arrival was only a matter of time. There was nothing I could do, other than to try and keep it in mind.

A time finally came, then, when the cloud was much closer, and then, suddenly, it was everywhere and I was inside it.

Everything felt different inside the cloud. There was a quietness, and it felt like the world had changed, and I think that somehow the world had changed, at least the part that was in there with me. My surroundings did not seem to be the same, and I appeared to be alone. The light was softer and maybe a little dimmer, but only a few wisps of gray cloud material were actually visible, smoke-like, at least nearby. There seemed to be a feeling of greater density around the border, which was quite a distance off. A figure was walking toward me along a broad area to the left, an area lit with soft light.

The figure came up beside me and a voice said, in my mind, that reality was not as we thought it was. That we placed construct on top of construct.

And I looked to a large area in front of me and to the right. It was filled with people and things. And the people and things started to disappear, several at a time, until, finally, reality itself disappeared. In its place was a vast flat plane, softly lit and soft-edged, colored like dark honey. At widely separated distances, tall, thin spikes went up, like sudden jiggles on a seismograph, and near the spikes were other people or entities, one-to-a-spike.

Beside me, on my left and slightly in front, a tall spike or spire went up. I felt that it actually came down, though, and embedded itself in the plane, the flat surface around me. The spike seemed to have a very thin sliver of a second spike associated with it, that did not extend upwards very far. The main spike was not actually circular in cross-section, but was significantly extended front-to-back, like a small wall that went up and up. And up. It extended a vast distance and then connected to a dark flat object sticking out far, far above me.

The object was another plane of existence, but one that had a leading edge on it. The edge was irregular and had a major rounded area in the center and lesser lobes to each side, much like the dark cloud had looked, at least in outline. The spike or spire or narrow wall went up and joined it on the bottom of the plane near the front, looking almost like the keel on a boat.

My awareness moved closer to the dark plane, and I could see small figures on it, looking down in different directions. I moved closer and I could see that they were short and somewhat thick, with rounded stomachs. They were human in appearance but were blue in color, a slightly grayed and darkened blue. They seemed to be dressed in pants and short, open vests, looking almost like pirates, though genies is an alternate explanation. I felt that one of them was the leader, the one that was looking most in my direction, or at least in the direction of my body. His head was bald on top, with very short, dark hair on the sides. He seemed to be directing the others in some way. They all seemed to be intent on something and very business-like in what they were doing.

I felt that they were concerned with watching over me in some way, protecting me, like guardian angels might do.