7

corridors, again

The tired days eventually melts away into the deep night. And a new world of dreams emerge like before, ever so often. Sometimes I loose track of time, waking up days before or days in the future. Not knowing the present, all the markers, papers, broadcasts in my travels never echo time or the date. I watch the skies and stars for my direction, my signals.

In one occasion, about a year ago I walked into a long, winding mountain road. A wormhole across the dense jungle all around me, as far as the mind can see. Intermittently waking up, to the rush of the monsoon to close the windows, and in the dream to wind up the car windows. Something soft and warm in the heart about yellow headlights of the car and the shards of raindrops it encounters. All along the route are death stones, more markers of events. A few times I stopped to look at the most vivid ones, the colorful Tibetan prayer flags and sometimes hanging coffins.

The destination emerged out of nowhere at one side of the road, to the right after a corner - I remember now. A narrow pathway carved out of soil and rocks. I drove straight to the majestic building at the end of it. The nearer I was to it, what seemed like the fountain of daylight pouring on the tall gigantic building slowly emerged as hundreds or maybe even thousands of lanterns on every corner of the building.

In another blink - waking up of the thunder, the car disappeared and I was walking along the corridors of the many halls of the building. There are people there, and like all the dreams, I can only see the faces of one or two. Then she came, she was familiar. The one whom i imagined in my many stories, that long dark braided hair. Where did she come from, suddenly the smile and the warmth and assurance. We walked along the halls, still silent and me desperately wanting to ask questions. At one moment she opened a door, where I figured must be at the far end of the building. We walked in into a small cozy reading room. Tables and green retro chairs, something from the 60's. And books on shelves with glass sliders. After what seems like an hour, me still there staring at her and the liberating feel of the room she opened the door again and...asked me to go. I walked out into a hall with shelves as high as twenty or thirty stories, so tall I could not even see the top, the ends. And I turned back to see her smile and close the door. And I started to explore. Walking among countless people, in strange symmetry with the lines of the corridors, with books and reading lamps repeating everywhere I look. All eyes closed.

6

into the unknown

On some trips, I wished the 400 miles were 4000 miles instead. And the moments melt away from cities to small towns to villages and mountains to dense jungles. Occasional lights shining through solitary huts in the middle of isolation forests. On some of this trips I fall asleep and dream of vast scapes of land cleared, their soil laid barren with movers and machines building giant monuments. One vivid memory was a tower which I could not see the top, looked miles high with flying machines buzzing around it. And all around there was no single instance of a tree or plant. The monument builders sometimes looked at us, the passing buses and trains on a the seemingly never ending road. Their eyes were blank, glowing blue grey story machines of this huge task, erecting something for some god.

On another ride in torrential rain, across mountain ranges all I could see was grey scapes blending in the shades of green, of the giant trees standing majestically still in the crushing rain. And below them were critters and bugs of all sorts, sheltering and yet again looking at us in the vehicles. Fireflies dot the miniature sky each tree creates and they were observing stars and evolving. Maybe the bus was traveling back in time.

Many more days on the roads and paths where humans seems to thread less, time had stopped still until the next sentience pass through awakening such miracle images of monuments and mechanical beings walking lands that doesn't exist anywhere else. I closed my eyes every time, at every moment another creature stares at me. I slip into time travel and wake up in another journey or dimension. Those were the best days.

[#] My dreams are much more interesting than the real world :)
[+] I did write about this dreams in fiction in another story set [The Search For Jim Thompson]