Dreams

This is a dream I had a while back, the most vivid dream I have eer had. One I have had more than once, a little different every time. Like the other I wrote about.

I ahould add, I am more spiritual than I am religious, so for any diety to pop up in my dreams is...odd. To say the least.

Off we go. Nighty night kiddies.

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I am barefoot, and as I shuffle along this cold, hard floor I realize I can barely feel my toes. I look down and note that the floor is made of stone, like to bottom of a cave.

Am I in a cave, I wonder. Somewhere, far away, I can hear the slow steady drip, drip of water on the stone. But there is no ceiling that I can see. But no sky as well. Just dark above, and cold below, and a strange light I keep thinking I will find if I keep wandering long enough..

Gradually I approach this light, shining from behind a door that is not attached to any walls. I look behind it, there is nothing there. I touch it, it does nothing. Yet I cannot open it and there is no lock. I wander past it, with a shrug of my shoulders and an erie sense of foreboding.

The door stays in my mind as I cross a stone brindge, made of the same grainy, uncomfortable stone I have been walking on for an age, it seems. But there is ahead of me a railing that looks like the overlooks I saw when traveling cross country. There will be a bluff below it, and something new for me to look at.

And there is. A room, if it had walls and a ceiling, I would call it a room, full of cedar chests and shelves and drawers. In it, there are people, running back nd forth, opeining the drawers and pulling out various articles of clothing, inspecting them and placing them back. On occasion someone will take it with them, and as they try it on, they disappear from my sight. Not move away, as if they were finished, but vanish, into thin air, as if I imagined them all along.

I realize somewhere in my mind this must be a dream. These cold rooms with no ceilings and stone floors full of chests and vanishing people cannot be real. But shouldn’t I wake up? If Iknow? Why can’t I leave.

I keep walking, and breathe in the smell of the cedar. Down rough hewn stairs that put splinters into my feet and along the other floor, that I was watching from above. These people, I watch them from up close. They are young, old, funny or sad. All of them. One comes to me with a polka dot skirt.

“What do you think?” She asks me.

I tell her I do not like it. But she doesn’t seem to hear me. She gets angry and huffs off. I wonder why she can’t hear me. I try to open the drawer in front of me. Again, I cannot. I begin to feel frustrated, as one by one, I try the drawers, cabinets and chests. None of them open, save one. Whenit does, I feel as if all the air has been squeezed out of my lungs. Inside, there is a faded plaid cotton shirt. It is blue, and smells of my grandfather. I have this shirt. It is a t home, in my drawers. It is my most prized posession.
I start to cry. I am crying for real. I can feel it in my chest as I stager up the stairs, back to towards that door that won’t open, trying to get out of this hateful dream that isn’t.

But as I approach the door I see something that I never thought I would. Something that stills my crying and both gives me and steals my breath.

Shiva. The god of life. The one who danced on chaos to bring this world into existence (if you believe that sort of thing). Shiva is standing in front of me.

Pale blue skin. Eye like the light behinf that door, unearthly, golden and full of fire. Across his body are beautiful symbols I have never seen before. I cannot read them, I cannot understnd them. I each of his thin, elegant hands there is a roll of bread. There is one in his mouth. And on his neck is a key.

The key feels heavy on my neck as I take it from him, sure that it is what I am supposed to do.

My eyes are dazzled and I begin to see things I had not seen before.

There is a boy standing beside me, one I think I have seen many times. He looks Phillipino, or maybe Vietnemeese. He is 12 or 13 and his eyes are black, like polished onyx. I have always known him. I am more and more sure of it as he takes my hand in his and leads me through the door.

There is a boy and a man on the other side. Standing in a forest dense with trees and the songs of birds. The boy, dressed in white, hugs me. I feel his arms go through me, and I can more sense his smile and voice than I can see and hear it. He tells me he is happy. That he has never been better. He thinks I have been looking for him, and I am unsure who he is.

Next to him, Pappa. My grandfather, there, smiling as he always does, lookng like he never left me. I reach for him, choking, and suddenly everything is gone.

I have finally woken, and am laying in my bed, covered in tears. I am sweating, and moaning and trying desperately to understand.

But I do. I died that night.