last night I had dreams that felt like obvious metaphors for quarantine:

I am trapped in an elevator, prying the doors open only to reveal more doors. I slowly and then suddenly realize that this elevator has stalled by design. A murderous architect has me in his web, caught between one floor and the next. I pry open another set of doors.

Behind metal, wood. Behind wood, metal.

And then i am in some kind of pedway, high in the air, like those bridges over highways, incased in mesh. I remember one in phoenix, arizona, that felt like it went on forever.

And in the floor there were more doors.

I break my nails as I pry them open, only to find some new portal to try and bully my way through.

I realize I am in a large cage, like a bird cage, rounded, with mesh sides that include the branches of a fruit tree. It’s tall like an apple tree, but the fruits look like cloudberries, small and orange and from the Finnish woods. And I understand now that I may be here for a very long time, awaiting the murderous architect. He will bide his time to collect whatever prize remains. I wonder how this time will change me.

I look over and there’s another tree, another cage. I can see a youngish man with long hair and a beard. I feel like I should remember the clothes he wore, because I remember thinking something of them. A denim shirt, maybe. It seemed like he somehow got closer, like the cage moved or the tree bent in the wind or maybe my attention just brought the camera in tighter. He started to speak. He spoke in the way you might imagine someone who has not said any words to anyone else in a while does — but the fast one, the one where so many words you haven’t been able to get out tumble through your mouth all at once that no matter what you’re saying you sound like a zealot. And once I understood the words he still sounded like a zealot.

He told me I should be overjoyed to start this new life, because things were so simple. He had fought it at first, he had screamed and cried and tried to escape and had wallowed in his misery and his fear of death. But then more time passed. And then more. So much time. And he ate the fruit of the tree and he drank the rain and he watched the birds and the clouds. He learned the birds and the clouds, how they are so knowable and yet also a complete mystery, and his days felt full. And he knew that one day the architect of all of this would come and kill him, and perhaps before that he would suffer greatly, but until then he took great joy in his days and slept through his nights. I imagine we were somewhere where it is always warm.

Yes, I thought, one must live while one lives, and often must die when one dies. Sure. Yes. Good. But this isn’t going to stop me from trying to get out of here alive.