This was an epic sort of dream. I was running around in near pitch black on a network of wooden catwalks and bridges that were suspended across and around the edges of a canyon. The canyon was roughly rectangular in shape, but rounded off at the corners. In what dim light there was, you could see that tall grasses covered the canyon floor, reaching to a height almost halfway up to the catwalks.
I knew I was being hunted. The enemy was trying to locate me in this maze of darkness! The overall effect was similar to a Medal of Honor type game, where you run around shooting people and waiting to get shot, except...I couldn't seem to find anybone to shoot and/or to shoot me.
Then the tenor of the whole desperate race changed, and I was just trying to find my way out of there! Because I was now convinced that Godzilla was coming any minute.
Somehow I must have found my way out of there, because next I knew, I was safe in a trench with my war buddies, swapping stories. I didn't really have a good story to swap, so I listened. My one war buddy was telling us about the time he saw Silverado. He recounted the whole plot, right up to where the one main guy was giving up, leaving town to head back East "to civilization". At that point, the movie just ends - the screen goes black, no resolution whatsoever. I was like, "man, that sucks!" But my war buddy disagreed, saying "Nope, they were just being true to the original story as written by mister Mark Twain. He was in the middle of writing it when he died." Which set me straight, I guess.
I'm still not in any hurry to see it in real life, though!
Next the scene changed, and my war buddy (the one who saw Silverado) was with a group of dignitaries meeting with high-level Chinese cold war detente diplomats. All of the dignitaries had lavish and significant gifts to give the Chinese diplomats. My war buddy gave them a quarter. At first you would think this was a slight. But then, he explained the special significance of this particular quarter, and you kept getting a close-up of the quarter as he was explaining it.
The dream kind of backed-up and forthed a couple times here, with different explanations of the quarter, each time with a new closeup. It was 1946, or then 1976, or then a quarter with the year of my war buddy's birth - each time there was something different on the quarter, creating the impression that different quarters in the old days had different 'heads' facings as well as special mottos on the face. One of the quarters showed a company of soldiers in loose formation, tromping through high grasses along the floor of a canyon. It bore the motto "HOW BOUT THEM COWBOYS" - who knew that Jimmy Johnson stole that quote from a WWII-era quarter!
After this, I was standing in a shallow cave in a canyon wall, watching a grim mass of soldiers make their way past through the high grass. Ben Franklin looked dismayed at the loose formation of soldiers walking along in drips and packs, some with rifles shouldered, others held in both hands, others slung across backs. As Ben groused about this, there was a sort of a musical jingle in the background accompanied by fife-flutes: "what sort of com-pan-ies are these?" Then two kids who were there set Ben straight: "No sir, Mister Franklin - this is the safest army in the history of the world! Meaning they keep us safest. I learned it in school!" Ben seemed very pleased to hear this. He immediately dropped all complaint, smiling and nodding amiably and clearly now proud of the ongoing military legacy of the nation he helped to birth.
The dream ended up with me in the Old West, as one of the Mexicans being hunted by a grim company of soldiers. We had sheltered in a cave hidden by tall grasses - sharing the cave with a pride of mountain lions - but the soldiers had tracked us right to the hilltop that the cave was burrowed into/under. One of the mountain lions heroically sacrificed itself by charging out, which was supposed to make the leader of the soldiers say "dang it, we thought we were tracking Mexicans - but we've been tracking lions!" after the soldiers all finished shooting the lion. We thought it worked, but then the soldiers rolled in a big lit bundle of dynamite, right into the cave mouth.
I forget what happened next, but it can't have been good.
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