Lost and Ever Lost, In Dreams

I walk into an old brick building on a campus. It seems so familiar. . . as if I should know it, and yet my memory is blurred. Climbing steps, I’m sure of where I need to go. I glimpse a door on an upper floor. Opening it, I look inside. It’s not the room I believed I sought. A feeling of foreboding now crawls over me. Somehow I know. . . that somewhere in this building some students wait for me. Panic grips me as I think of the minutes I am losing. That room. . . That room. . . Where is it? I move down corridors, up stairs, down stairs, Opening door after door after door after door to rooms from which strangers’ faces stare blankly back at mine. Now I’m racing down many flights of stairs, then up, running to opposite sides of the building and back, Steps turn into escalators! How strange. . . .Old blends into new. The building, once so common, has now become gigantic. I’m swallowed up by it, by its limitless labyrinth hallways leading me to nothing. I must get back to where I started from! Running, running. . . I awaken with a jolt! Having drifted back to sleep, I find myself this time on a bustling and modern city street. It seems so familiar. . . . as if I should know it. Those rising skyscrapers. A place I once lived or maybe visited? Starting to walk, I seem to know (how do I know?). . that a narrow street of tiny shops and outdoor vendors waits around the corner, a cobbled street where new turns into old. Again. . . That same hideous foreboding begins to creep upon me. . . And as I turn around, the street I’d walked along looks not the same. Should I try to backtrack? Something tells me. . . . I have tried and failed at that before. . . in other dreams. Panic is resurfacing again, for I just know. . . I’m never going to find my way back to where I started.