treading water

I had a dream last night. I was on a barge that was up against a dock. I was waiting for something, so I picked up a magazine and sat in a deck chair at the back railing near the water.

Then a ten story wall of water came at the barge and swept me away with it. The barge tipped over and I was almost caught and smashed underneath it, but I missed it by a meter and ended up treading water with many others.

My grandmother, Mum mum, was also there treading water with us. (She died over twenty years ago). There was a lot of debris floating around us, so I grabbed something and gave it to my grandmother. I said, "Mum mum, see if this will keep you afloat." Then I told all the others to get something to hold onto. And then another wall of water crashed down on us, knocking us out and sucking all the water away with it. When I came too, there was only mud and rocks now and I saw a person lying on the rocky bottom of what used to be a body of water. I also saw a mermaid lying near by, passed out. I picked both of them up and started carrying them towards an embankment that was high up the side of the edge of the muddy hollowed-out sea space. This wall had a railing on it, it was like a promenade at the seashore, and it had hundreds of people on it watching us.

So what is going on here? Is the mermaid my nonsensical, idealistic side and the other person the pragmatic in me? And I'm trying to save them both...

Obviously I treading water in a tsunami...

and I don't know what I am going to do.