I dreamt of a house on stilts and under that house was a large collection of shells, mainly mussel shells. The owner of the house was an old man, who seemed to welcome passers-by to view his collection of shells. Several other people – all strangers to me – were also looking at the shells and I noticed they seemed interested but removed from the experience. I wondered why the old man kept all these shells – they weren’t rare or valuable. There were several intricate handmade timber boxes among the collection. I opened one of the boxes and inside it was a mussel shell (almost fully closed) and much the same as many others in the collection. I sensed something unusual and I looked deep inside the shell and saw a house inside the shell. The house was too large to be in the shell and yet it was contorted and cramped into the shell. Gravity, time and space were irrelevant in the shell. The contorted house made no sense being inside the shell, but there it was. I listened carefully and I heard silent screams from within the house in the shell. I looked deeper and through the gaps of a closed louver window shudder in the house I could see an eye of a young man. He was trapped in the house in the shell. The young man was too large for the house, which although itself was much larger than the shell, was tiny compared to the young man trapped inside. I could only see the young man’s eye but I could hear the screams inside his head - they were the screams of someone lost to this world. He was imprisoned in the house in the shell, unable to even move. I looked for the old man who owned the shell collection but I couldn’t see him. Did the old man know that within the shell in the box was a young man trapped in a house? I wanted to smash the mussel shell to save the young man or to stop him suffering any more but that seemed pointless in a place where gravity, time and space did not exist. Then I was drawn to open another of the timber boxes and when I did I found another shell inside that second timber box. There was something inside the shell in the second timber box – something deeply personal to me – that pleaded, almost begged, for me to look inside the shell and to analyse all that was within. “No,” I told myself “do not look in the shell!”. Then I woke. I felt relieved because I now understand that that I can only be trapped (again) if I look into the "shell".
Do not look into the shell. Never look into the shell.
