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| What's It All About? |
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| Mana in the Void |
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| The Glamour and the Despair |
I walk by myself in a muted world. I know this because the dream perspective is through my own eyes and even though I cannot see my body, I see the world jitter slightly as I put one foot in front of the other. It now looks like each step vibrates my sight, but does not affect the road I’m on.
All around me is a flat expanse, soundless, empty of people;
filled with blurred rock, bush, mountain, and one or two bare trees. As I gaze
straight ahead, I realize that I am stopped. I cannot look behind or even side
to side. Other than my forward view, I realize the blur is because much of the
wide world is in my peripheral eye sight. As I wonder and worry about this
realization, I begin to walk and all around me are telephone poles strung with
many levels of wires. Bus benches, blowing paper, gutters, street grates, a
water fountain and concrete sidewalks. As I walk, I experience a visual doppler effect where blurry items become sharp as I approach and dim as I pass them. I seem to be in a membrane which obscures my vision until I approach the outer edges. Within this membrane is silence. I want to hear noise. I search for the sounds of birds, cars, bicycles, skateboards, people and worry that this profound silence means that I am deaf.
I feel myself moving forward, not stepping now, but gliding
soundlessly through this soundless world onto a long, straight blacktop highway
with a double yellow stripe down the middle. Such roads only exist in the
desert, I’m thinking, and in my peripheral sight, there are spiny cactus, sand
and rock. The colors have gone from white washed pale, to concrete grey, to dry
brownness. The black asphalt points like an arrow to the horizon and that is
where my gaze is focused.
Without me noticing a change the membrane dissolves and the black road becomes a brown
gravel road littered with rock, weeds and the possibility of crawling
creatures. It seems to be swallowed up by the mountain at the horizon and I
wonder if a train is coming. As I wonder, I see a black figure far away shimmering
in the false mirage of the road. It is still and so am I. Nothing moves. The
road and desert surroundings have become flat, motionless paintings, two
dimensional and cartoonish. It is at this point I am able to look behind me. I
see a mirror image of the road in front, cartoonish and shimmering in the
distance. The backward view however, has no mountain, just flat earth and pale
sky with the broad stripe of road. As I twist to the side to see the extent of
road and horizon, in my peripheral vision, I see the black figure approaching.
As
I turn to get a straight forward view, the figure becomes a black dog. It looks
like an all-black, Australian sheep dog, furry around the face with pointed
ears and flashing black eyes. I feel a relief and gather myself to greet him,
but the black dog snarls and barks, shattering the pervasive silence. He
bunches his muscles and runs toward me showing sharp white teeth.
I am shocked, maddened, and as he gets closer, I am
infuriated. The betrayal and rage pulse through my now visible body. I stand
my ground beating my fists against my thighs readying myself to lunge forward
and grab the dog by the neck. The black dog pauses for one final leap onto me
and I shout. In my dream mind, I am screaming, “Get out of here.”
“Kathy, Kathy, wake up! You’re roaring. Stop!” my husband’s
dark silhouette has risen above the covers. He is lightly tapping my arm. My
throat is raw and my chest is heaving as I gasp for breath. I am sorry for
waking him and for him waking me. As we settle back into the blankets I know I’ll
see the black dog again until I tame him.
(btw... sorry about the commercial up front - you can skip through it. Enjoy 🐶)
