dystopian dream

I dreamt last night that downtown Santa Barbara was flooded completely, permanently. The streets had become canals and the flooded lower levels of buildings were all abandoned. The water rose and fell with the tides, and the water left its mark on the walls of the buildings that were still standing. Most buildings were rotting away in the water, windows broken by the pressure of the water, paper, gypsum, wood, and asphalt shingles floating in mildewed and moldy chunks, but there were a few buildings that seemed likely to continue to survive. Stone and concrete were faring well. Adobe was melting, reverting back to mud, red tile roofs collapsing into the water. Steel was rusting, huge orange scales marking the high tide line.

I rode down State Street in a dinghy with a little outboard motor, the sound echoing off the buildings and through the paseos.

We turned right on Ortega and there were three men with a filthy old rust-bucket of a boat scavenging in the abandoned buildings. They were ripping wires and copper pipes from the walls of what had been the Volkswagen dealership. There was a foul oil slick around the whole area. I guessed that it was the oil from the hydraulic lifts as well as fluids from thousands of leaks and spills over the years. Volkswagen was polluting the world even more, this time as a result of the climate change that they helped to cause. Those guys had sludge all over their bodies, and they were cursing because the oil on their hands was making their job more difficult.

Even my beautiful hometown, in its bubble of wealth and privilege, it still wasn't safe from the rising seas, and here it was, abandoned buildings being stripped for scrap metal like a city in the rust belt.

Part of the inspiration for this dream came from something I saw on a walk in my neighborhood yesterday. Someone had attached the middle and lower sections-including the propeller-of an outboard motor to their mailbox. It made me remember some of the times I rode in a boat with an outboard motor. Part of it came from the prominence of water in my consciousness these past few days, and part of it came from my concern over what changes in sea level will do to coastal cities and especially my hometown. Also playing a part was my sense of guilt from driving my Volkswagen, which pollutes a lot more than I thought it did when I bought it.