It was a few weeks ago.

Ever since I started studying theology I dream I am in university again. I have treated it like it. I take notes in church.

Only one thought I was weird but the minister’s wife was knitting so I really didn’t care.

In my dreams I pick up and leave off like I am watching a movie or living a double life. I can tell I am dreaming and can even remember previous dreams while I am dreaming.

In this dream I remember walking to campus along a dirt road that stretched out to a grassland. There was a barbed wire gate but instead of cows there was an alligator and three hippopotamus tied to the right post.

I was not impressed in my dream because they were new and I didn’t like dangerous animals so close to the road.

After class which was like the other two years, I couldn’t find so after wandering around I went to the market. In my dreams I am sometimes on a Vancouver campus, but you can take a train or bus to Victoria or Parksville. It has little booths and shops with fancy clothes and jewelry, a few coffee shops and a pub.

This day everyone was closing early. I decided to walk.

There had been a flood in the valley and the gate to the field was twisted. I walked past the alligator and it was stuck in the mud. I realized it was very old and thought “good, serves you right”. I was a little scared of the hippopotamus but they were still chained up, and up to their necks in mud.

I saw someone I knew down the road and a village had been wiped out from a flood. He was with a group of survivors he helped rescue but he really wanted to save the alligator.

“are you fucking nuts? It’s dangerous!”

“no, it is old and just needs our help. It will die but it is cruelty to let an animal die like that”

I was so mad in the dream. It was a safe enough road that I let the kids go with the rest of the village, swore at him a bunch….

Then we went to the dip in the road where the alligator was and dug and pushed it out like a car. I was concerned it would bite me but I told my friend even if we were rescuing it I had no issues punching or shooting it.

We got it free enough so it was out of the mud pit and it pretty much slithered along. It was very old. I swore at my friend. I didn’t think it was fair he thought this gator was more important than the kids in the village but he was right, it was an act of compassion.

I remember walking away, coating in mud that I was still scared of the hippos. I would rather have been around a pack of guard dogs.

Then I found out the next day my friend had trouble in his life. I can tell a story with my dreams, I can’t explain how I know abstract pieces fit in reality.