The Dream

          “In a nostalgic vision of America, I can feel its innocence, see its beauty and pain, its blood, love and tears, its rebirth and its freedom….

And even in the many times I denied and detested it all, scorning its existence, she never left and as far as I would stray or run, I found myself forever homesick.”

         

The dream

    …I found myself in a Texas Desert, balanced on a sagging telephone line suspended between the staggered, crooked poles that stood, undisturbed for a century, lurching as if skeleton legs of ancient creatures-stark and hard as petrified bone.

       Black thunderhead clouds rolled slowly overhead lost and wandering against an enormous sky, a domed blue canopy of an infinite Cathedral.

From their depths, Mercury raindrops beat down upon my brow falling to the desert floor below. I could smell the ozone in rising dust of their impact.

        My arm was outstretched in front of me and in the palm of my hand I held a myriad of tiny strange gypsy creatures dancing around in suspended animation.

               I stepped with nimble grace across the taut wire inching myself forward as I looked outward with indifference over a scorched barren wasteland of sagebrush and the vastness of a shadowless earth, unsure why I was here only observing by perplexed circumstance. The poles went on forever linked by their wires like a drooping spine.

     In the distance I watched a station wagon of Indians in full head-dress drive over a cliff chasing an eagle, while laughing pink salmon rained and flew from the clouds of sandy tornadoes. A spotted white coyote howled for the moon on a far away ledge. I also howled back an echoing lonely cry and laughed like a lunatic feeling none of the laughter’s joy, and listened again for the echo to come bouncing back melodically like a swarm of butterflies.

      Cocking my head this way and that like a big awkward bird, I stopped in mid step, one foot in front of the other focusing my eye on a far away pole where I thought I saw what appeared to be Jesus crucified onto a telephone pole with his arms outstretched on the wooden cross bars. I stared for an uncertain amount of time not sure what to make this familiar yet unusual mirage appearing in the mirrors of waving heat.

     I adjusted my balance then continued surefooted step after step on the sagging line until I  reached the crossbars of the next pole. I rolled my hand letting the tiny creatures fall like pebbles before scattering and burrowing into the sand. I decided to make the climb down, although knowing I would be down amongst the slithering scaled creatures-rattlesnakes, scorpions and horned lizards, all hiding amongst the rocks and laying in wait under a veil of hot sand.

     I scurried down like a monkey and leaped the last fair height landing with my bare-feet sinking into the burning sand and fire kicking up flames as i trudged forward anyway through this Hell's sun baked Eden as if following the footprints of Adam and a thousand others tempted by it's prickly poison and heat.

      Sweat drenched and cooled my body as I staggered in a futile laborious pursuit of a feverish mirage that seemed to flee further with each step i took in a desert destined to swallow me up. He was poised on the far away horizon on an earth that no longer rotated.

       In defeat and exhaustion, I dropped to my knees in a useless attempt to crawl. I would die again here.

   
      Skin began to peal from my body and as I surrendered the sand shifted and the earth quaked beneath me. To my surprise, a giant tortoise violently unearthed itself before all stilled into silence with this creature patiently waiting, obviously summoned as my beast of burden. I scanned the whole panorama with suspicion. Then without a second thought or choice, I climbed upon his enormous back knowing he would instinctively carry me to this queer apparition appearing on the horizon.

     
       We moved on slow yet effortlessly with time of no essence but eventually reached our destination where before me, I climbed off and rested my hands on my knees while staring fixated up above at what was surely the presence of Jesus Christ himself hanging in the windy silence. I witnessed The flesh of Jesus in all Glory appearing as a mere mortal in Earthly pain. It was not laughter but crying I had heard on the wind.

    What was this and what did it mean? Too perplexing for simple answers as to my end or judgment. I still was unaware of where I was if not a purgatory or hell. It fore sure was no Heaven. I had wondered about Jesus for years as I would ponder a friend. I had denounced God enough times in my life to not believe in faith but then begged for him even more countless times whenever I was in pain. But this was different, abstract of me, perhaps not even my dream. I was a no more than a tourist here.

     At my feet, just below him, a beautiful rose had grown in the sand where his blood had dropped from the thorned mesquite wreath of a crown. Before I could begin to comprehend or conjure an emotion of any kind, the tortoise walked over, stretched out his ancient leathery neck and without malice, ate the flower snipping it off at its stem with his pointed beak. I gasped in overwhelming guilt and cried loudly, "no!" I gazed up into the overwhelming beautiful eyes that teared and looked away in shame. I somehow knew my journey here was over. I would leave with no enlightenment or answers of any kind. There was nothing even humbling now in the presence of Jesus’ silence, just a vast empty loneliness and silence.

      Panic hit my chest with catastophic terror of all that is unsure to all that begins or ends and me at the infinite threshold of both. There has to be a final truth an end somewhere, a bigger truth to myself, the self, this aloneness!

   I felt it futile to now panic and looked for a direction with some kind of sign be it neon or written in the clouds by God. There was no reason for me to stay and nothing more for me to see in such a sad land except for the hypocrisy of it all. I Looked in all directions but saw only the same horizons spinning and circling me like buzzards and I knew to choose any direction would be to travel continuously while never reaching an end and confirming both my death and eternity - neither of which I was yet prepared for.

   The turtle in his quiet shaman wisdom sensing my naïve confusion of indecision, began digging ferociously with agile and speed, disappearing into the collapsing sand of a gaping hole. There were no other choices left. I tentatively peered in  and then a glance back at the world and spectacle before me before and then in head first after him all the while knowing there would be no way out, no way to return and possibly my own demise.

  Was Hell not at the center of the earth as I was taught as a child? But where was this place I was leaving behind? I dove without hesitation accepting whatever the consequence as the most profound I had ever felt in giving in to faith.

   Over and over i plummeted, falling thousands of miles for hours it seemed or perhaps only seconds down through an airless vacuum, void of light or gravity falling both up and down. I free fell past everything and faces of everyone i had ever known and witnessed my life repeat itself over and over  in a kaleidoscope form reflecting me for layers upon layers of time that danced in a multitude of colorful vignettes from a thousand dreams.

I reached out to join and take part of the brilliance and at that instant i was plunged into darkness now fully aware of falling at a turbulent speed  No more light at the end of this tunnel and descent to Hell. My mortality was returning to me as I began to fear the pain of hitting a solid bottom from the weightless mortal coil I had just passed through. I could sense it as near as my child dreams of falling but lucid and painfully real.

    I gasped in terror sensing a moments hard deadly blow at an incredible speed.Then as expected but without warning, I crashed swift slapping me onto a rain soaked black plastic membrane which turned out to be the awning canopy of a mexican fish market that I tore through breaking my fall but non the less landing with a hard thud onto a pile of mackerel. I was dumbfounded and alive with anxiety and emotion amongst bustling chaos of a fish market I had seen before. I began to feel for the first time real pain, physical pain and smells-My senses burning and pounding. Frantically I searched for my lumbering friend the tortoise only to be saddened and shocked to look up and see him hanging from a lofted meat hook and scale. I was on my own now….

Chapter one: On a Prayer

         

           I didn’t give the dream much thought. My head was pounding. It’s hard to say if falling into a pile of fish was symbolic of something infinitely profound or had to do with waking up with a horrible hangover to find myself………(to be continued)