I’ve always wished I possessed extrasensory perception. I was particularly keen to have telepathy or teleportation, to read people’s minds or instantaneously transport myself across miles. Alas, this was not to be, despite hours wasted focusing with all my might, eyes clenched closed, on the feat.

I recently realized, however, that I may have experienced precognition all unaware. Because the incident happened years ago when I was a child, and fulfillment of its prediction didn’t occur until recently, I failed to recognize the episode for what it was.

When I was about thirteen, I had a particularly vivid dream. In it I was sitting in the driver’s seat of a car next to another person. We weren’t driving, not surprising since at the time I didn’t know how to. We could see through the windshield, however, and the sight amazed and terrified us. While inside the vehicle we couldn’t move, experiencing a paralysis, outside the world continued to function. In fact we were passing through time, years, and the landscape flashed by in fast-motion. We sat frozen as we saw empty prairies become layered with streets, then housing developments, then business buildings, finally skyscrapers reaching up to the heavens. A sense of horror, terror, seized me. More than anything, I wanted to break loose of my immobility to escape.

There was no resolution to the dream. I woke and retained the general impression for years. In fact it inspired in a convoluted way a still-to-be-published novel.

More than that, it laid the groundwork for a continuing nightmare in my mind, one that appears to be taking shape in my hometown and nearly everywhere across the nation. With what appears to be a great deal of pride, the Denver Post reports Denver’s City Council is set to approve planning for huge development smack in the middle of what now is an amusement park and a sports arena.  A massive tsunami of thousands of people to live and work there, crowding our streets, putting pressure on urban design which even now resembles solid blocks of ugly, depressing architecture.

I fear in the not-too-distant future, the entire country will resemble the horrendous developments of southern California and the megalopolis of the East Coast. This is no way for humans to live, not if they wish to encourage decent relationships and positive lifestyles for all. Surely no one, not even the perpetrators of the rude, violent, threatening behavior that accompanies modern conditions, would willingly accept this horror. If you’ve ever been on a New York subway in rush hour or in front of the Colorado state capitol where a park has been laid waste by trash, human excrement, foul language and behavior, you know what I mean. In our mad rush to equate constant growth with “progress,” we’re laying waste to ourselves, our culture.

Somehow all those years ago, my unconscious must have received the information about the impending tragedy. So I obtained my goal of achieving precognition, to my sorrow.