Favorite Dreamed Landscapes (Without People)

1.
A sort of massive marine cave with some fallen little tree trunks and streams leading through it. A good place to sit and relax and not be bothered with questions.

2.
An open suburban field, the kind only used for youth sports--though about a block longer than usual. I ran a circle around it at dusk once; I had an errand to do.

3.
Another suburban field, this one directly adjoining a middle school. It was my first day, but fortunately no-one else was there. I got to roam around for a bit instead.

4.
Just the other day, I visited a wonderful airport area. Very long frontage hugging a bay; the grounds walkable somehow(?). An open hexagonal structure in three stories sat on a hexagonal island out in the bay; it was only beams and floors, no walls to speak of. Five or so planes were parked on the floors; this was, apparently, the TWA terminal.

5.
A slim clearing just off a country road, with very regular pines all about. A gingerbread-ish sort of house, the kind where all the walls are papered, sitting in it. I wasn't doing such a good job filling in the details so the impression was closer to being in a toy railroad set than being in a pine forest. (I will say that the whole was quite reminiscent of framed samplers and certain quarters of Attleboro.)

6.
An endless post-industrial neighborhood. You could leave a brownstone and walk down a street where the "industry" would increase by delightfully slight increments; sooner or later you would end up among this immense row of factories with wild high smokestacks. Brick retaining walls proliferated to an alarming degree; many pyramids of green steel piping also. Traces of grass for effect...no dandelions, though.

7.
A sort of ziggurat neighborhood whose streets would twist up and converge into one little peak after another. A bit like Worcester, with above-ground pools visible here and there among Little Tykes trucks, under-utilized boats, discarded Alexander the Grape boxes, and wonderfully excessive rib-level chain-link fencing. The continual action of grade and convergence lent a welcome air of "questing urbanity" to the otherwise prosaic proceedings.

8.
A California town where the residents had aimed for a "Mediterranean" feel and fallen wide of the mark; a piazza and its fountain had been copied with one eye shut from Tomie dePaola, while a lengthy dining arcade with Moroccan, Grecian, and Cypriot modes (complete with miniature charcoal pits) went untravelled. At night, Ionic motifs appeared around the windows and doors of downtown in dull fluorescent greens and oranges.

9.
A parched, flat desert, very red. Dwellings had been hollowed out from long, low rock formations, and fitted with bubble-windows. Inside, they were outfitted with thin rugs and spindly coffee-tables...some with geothermal baths tucked in corners. No separate rooms. The one conventional building was a convention hall...a comic book convention had just packed up and some stacks of flyers were still out here and there.

10.
A wintry day, and beachfront strips (kites, confections, five-and-tens) transplanted to the sides of an austere urban boulevard (rigorously shaped thick yew hedges, wrought iron, not much else). A fittingly austere and wintry locomotive serving as a commuter rail ran on sunken tracks down the middle of the boulevard; you could descend some rungs to board and sit in the plush white seats therein. Yes, the contrast was a little precious...on the whole still an interesting place to be.