Remembering the wave

Two nights before all the chaos of September 11, I had an awful nightmare. It was probably the worst dream I've ever had. The morning after my dream I told Max, and my friend Toni - who I worked with at the time. It was this:

For whatever reason, people knew it was the end of the world, and were preparing for this. I was in a small wooden house with my mother, father and brother. We decided we all wanted to be together if we were going to die. We were sitting on the floor, in a circle, holding hands. I was feeling very anxious about the fact that Max still hadn't arrived and the time was drawing near. I kept looking out the window, hoping to see him. Eventually I spotted him in the distance, only because he had a bright red t-shirt on. [his Ferrari t-shirt] He walked in, and apologized. He had books under his arm, and explained he stayed too long at the library. I was surprised he would care about this and place priority on his studies, but decided that being an academic was just a part of his nature. We made space for Max in our circle, and all joined hands. For whatever reason, we could suddenly tell it was time, and then I heard it. This HUGE wave coming.... I could hear the water, and sense the weight of it. This wave just washed over everything, and suddenly it all went black.

It was horrible. And I woke up feeling terrible.

On 911 my dad called and woke me. We were on the West Coast and my parents were on the East Coast. The rest is pretty obvious: glued to the TV, crying, trying to imagine what this meant in the world.

Today in my German class, we had a moment of silence. My teacher Eva had us go around the room and talk about how 911 has effected our lives. I talked about my dream. She told me that psychologist Carl Jung had a dream about a tidal wave right before WWI.

I went online today and researched this, and this is what I found:

Jung experienced a series of visions in the autumn of 1913. A feeling of oppression had been troubling him for a while, and his experience demonstrates the possible effects of future angst which can occur in an individual, especially when faced with the instability seemingly endemic to 20th century life. He writes about these experiences in his autobiography:

In October, while I was alone on a journey, I was suddenly seized by an overpowering vision: I saw a monstrous flood covering all the northern and low lying lands between the north sea and the Alps. When it came up to Switzerland I saw that the mountains grew higher and higher to protect our country. I realised that a frightful catastrophe was in progress. I saw the mighty yellow waves, the floating rubble of civilisation, and the drowned bodies of uncounted thousands. Then the whole sea turned to blood . . . two weeks passed; then the vision recurred . . . even more vividly than before, and the blood was more emphasised. An inner voice spoke. "Look at it well; it is wholly real and it will be so. You cannot doubt it." Soon afterwards [June 1914] I had a thrice repeated dream that in the middle of summer an Arctic cold wave descended and turned the land to ice . . . the entire region totally deserted by human beings. All living things were killed by frost.

One month later, on August 1st of that year, World War I broke out, and Jung's prescience was a shock even to himself. It led to a deep exploration of his own psyche, in an effort to understand the nature of his increasingly intense psychic turbulence. It also galvanised in him a sense of the urgency and importance of his life's work; he felt that man was at a crisis point, and a greater understanding of his nature was crucial if he were to survive.