I was in a hotel room in Dakar, completing arrangements for a youth conference that was taking place in a few days in Abidjan. Several Senegalese kids who had been promised paid tickets to participate in the conference were spending considerable time in my hotel room waiting for the arrangements to be worked out, but the organizers had promised spots to far more people than they could actually afford. I had several increasingly-desperate phone conversations with the organizers about the situation, but as time ran out I decided to go ahead to Abidjan alone to try and resolve the problem directly.

The AirAfrique flight was nearly empty as we taxied out into the steamy night. The plane wobbled slightly as it accelerated down the runway, as if the pilot was dodging small obstacles. Just as the plane left the ground, there was a sharp lurch, and my seatbelt dug into my waist. The ground swept by just under the wings as the plane struggled to gain altitude. Only a couple hundred feet above the ground, the left wing swung slowly downward until the plane was almost completely on its side. I looked down an empty row of seats and through the far window at the city's ill-lit streets and the tops of low buildings sweeping by just below us.

The plane shuddered and righted itself, but was quickly losing altitude. I watched the lights of ships docked in the port float closer as the pilot steered us toward open water. I knew then that he had given up hope; we were going down. The darkened cabin was eerily quiet, as if I was the only one on board. I realized that I didn't know where the emergency exit was located, and began frantically looking for it in the gloom as the water fell up toward us and I awaited the inevitable concussion.

I awoke as we hit the water, but the dream loomed over me all day with the irrefutable presence of an omen. Plane crash dreams are my subconscious mind's current iconography of choice, they're like violent post-it notes pointing out a must-read mental memo. Before plane crashes, it was images of gun violence, and before that, tornadoes. They share a clear parentage: the need for a physical embodiment for the massive, uncontrollable forces which can, at a random moment, reach out and transform the landscape forever.

I've learned to heed these signs. The first tornado appeared a couple days before the car accident that killed fellow Peace Corps Volunteer Michele and left my friend Jennifer with permanent brain damage. That image would return intermittently to herald moments of grand and terrifying changes. Months later, I was traveling through a particularly desolate region of Senegal, a flat expanse of clay-dry desert cupping a fragile ribbon of fertile river, when I saw my dream come alive. A monstrous swirling dust devil, forty feet wide and extending hundreds of feet into the sky, was grinding across the desert ahead. I watched as the sinuous tornado scoured its way across the narrow band of paved road and off again into the distance. There are few distinct moments I can point to in which my life pivoted and changed direction, but in that moment I felt the rapture of a prophecy, a vision of my future. When my two years in Peace Corps were over, I went on to live another year in that region's desert, and was cleansed daily in the thin lifeline of that river.

Symbols that are seen too often tend to lose their power. When I see someone with a yin & yang tattoo, I seldom consider the perfection of this ancient symbol, however worthy the symbol is of such meditation. Instead, I tend to think about how this unfortunate person has succumbed to the transient 1990's bodymod fad, and wonder at what point in the next decade that temporary tattoos will be standard 1990's revival party-wear.

But new symbols, freshly decanted from our shared unconscious, lack authority. It's one of the practical reasons that successful religions appropriate the iconography and celebrations of other doomed faiths. That, and the eroding ability of well-worn symbols to inspire proper awe, also explains why my mind periodically seeks out fresh symbolism for the awesome forces toying with our fates. The plane crash, which already carries considerable power as a cultural icon, was an excellent choice for my devious little subconscious mind. But I'm getting tired of living through them.

After this plane crash, as in the aftermath of any such catastrophe, there must be an investigation to determine the cause. I'm lucky, because this personal disaster presents clear clues that lead me quickly to an explanation. Like the dream, it begins in Senegal. I had some good friends there. I also had a lot of things I wanted to forget. As with those kids in Dakar, I left my friends to go onward and make arrangements for the future. I spent a year washing in that river Lethe, letting go of the things I needed to surrender, and in the process forgot friends' letters, weddings, faces. Eventually, I too was forgotten. It was a slow, subtle disaster, transpiring unnoticeably in the edges of our lives. Then one night, the plane falls through the hot evening toward the ocean, so quietly that it's like I'm the only one left on board.

This plane crash was easily explained and avoided, but as with most disasters, it's unlikely the pieces left lying in the wake can be fit back together the way they were before. Even with the best effort, subtle signs of the cataclysm remain visible even after public attention has shifted to more recent diversions.