Young Writers Project is a creative online community of teen writers, photographers, and artists, based in Vermont since 2006. Each week, VTDigger features the writing and art of young Vermonters who publish their work on youngwritersproject.org, a free, interactive website for youth 12-18 years old. To find out more, visit youngwritersproject.org, or contact Executive Director Susan Reid at sreid@youngwritersproject.org; 802-324-9538.
Whether you find symbolism in the land of your dreams or usually just wake up with a “Huh, that was funny,” our unconscious hours are what provide our subconscious gardens — including the creative parts of the brain — with the sunshine they need to flourish. This week’s featured personal essayist, Piper Leibon of Thetford, recounts the exploration of a barren, dystopian cityscape recurringly conjured up during some shuteye.
Dreamscape
By Piper Leibon, 15, of Thetford
Dreams have always been a huge part of my life. For as long as I can remember, I have had lucid and easily controllable dreams that have acted as a way for me to experience any reality I’ve wanted.
I love to create my own stories, and dreams are a way for me to test the stories that I think of, to experience them, and to make them feel real. I often have recurring dreams, a few of which have been with me since my earliest years — many are good, some are not, but each one is a beautiful experience.
One such recurring dream, mostly from fifth and sixth grade, was recently brought to my mind again. This was one of my favorite dreamworlds, a fantastic dystopia of desert and rock. It was one of my many dreams that focused more on worldbuilding than any story or plot, due to the fact that the scenery, although at first seeming simple, was some of the most complex I have thought up to date.
The main focus of this dream was a city, and although I have long since forgotten the name, I can still remember exactly how it looked. It was created out of scraps of the world as it is known today, from tattered flags and pieces of old buildings, to dull, faceless mannequins and broken signs still blinking with dying neon lights. The main structure of the city, however, seemed almost naturally occurring, made entirely of rocks. Not a single cliff or rockface, but scattered piles and stacks of lackluster stones and boulders, similar to the ones that can be found as trail-markers, but far larger, with stones the size of buildings.
The society that had taken root in this rock city was a standard dystopian type. The rich would sit on their high thrones and do nothing but watch as the lower classes scrambled to survive, and, more often than not, failed to do so. But in this dream, there was no higher society, only the ghosts of such things, forever plastered on billboards and broken televisions. Yet those ghosts of the past still terrified most people, keeping humanity from advancing back to, or beyond, where the world had once stood.