(1/17/10) can't stop the crash

(Entered into paper journal at 8:38 AM at Sit & Wonder cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was in a car with my family. I was in the backseat, and possibly on the passenger side, but I was driving the car. It was night. We were on a lonely road in the desert. We had come from a town, to which I had driven (I saw, in my mind's eye) earlier in the day.

My mom, who sat in the driver's seat, reminded me to drive faster on the way back. I said I would. I remembered having had some trouble with other cars on the highway because I had driven at a slow speed on the way up. I had driven at what I'd thought was the correct speed, but it had been too slow.

We now turned right, off the small road and onto the highway. The landscape around the road was filled with tall mounds of red stone bounded by tan expanses of ground and little green shrubs The rad went downhill, though occasionally it would roll up a little. We were all alone on the road, but I kept my speed  up, slightly more than I though I should have, because I was jittery about someone driving up behind me and getting impatient.

I took a turn which I hadn't quite seen in time to drive through smoothly. It was a very wide curve on a long, mild, downward slope. The road itself was wide. I fell under the momentum of the missed turn. Instead of winding right with the curve, I drove forward and slightly left. The car was slowing down as we approached the left edge of the road.

I was trying to regain control of the car, but I couldn't. I knew we were going to go off the side of the road. I asked my mom how I could regain control of the car. But she didn't answer. I hoped that our drive off the road wouldn't be terrible. I called to my mom again, but she didn't respond. She just kept still.

We drove off the road. We rolled, slowly, gently, down a bank-slope about six or seven feet tall, then stalled on a flat stretch of land.

I called to my mom, asking how we could get out of this space. She just sat still, facing forward. I called to her again and again. She was motionless. I realized how worn out she looked. Her hair was grey and meager looking. I called to my mom again and again. Now my mom slumped forward as if dead or unconscious. I got extremely worried. I called frantically, "Mom! Mom!"