Tag: The Clearing

The dreaming took me and I just woke up.

I only partially recognized the land in which I woke. The world was strange, tilted slightly on its axis. The barn I had stepped into looked like one I knew years ago, but what lay on its shelves and against its walls was nothing like I had known when it was; if not new, younger.

Various jackets marched across long poles between shelves, dishes and candles and books lay in scattered piles covered in dust. And, in one corner where the hardware and boxes of nails lay thrown together, several broken black velvet ring boxes held jewelry that found its way into my pockets.

Several tiny rings, ear pieces, and one tiny bracelet made of moonstone and diamond. 

They all disappeared the moment I crossed the barn’s threshold, left standing under a large, spreading, barren tree as the wind whipped by overhead. I heard laughter in it, high and screeching with the howling of the winds. I was carried down in the direction of the house which before my eyes became a large and sprawling stone building. Its halls were complicated and lay in a tangled heap of limbs, as though some stone cephalopod had landed there.

I wandered the halls and in time, forgot how I had come to be there. I found hidden passages and roamed its mostly-empty byways until I came across an artist I recognized. There was rage in my shaking voice as I pointed her out in the sunlight-dappled stone hall. Denied a free-for-all because of the content of some blog or book of mine. Some “moral failing” she decided I’d had instead of anything concrete. As if its existence declared any creation she offered me provided tacit approval, instead of luck-of-the-draw. Annoying, and rage-inducing when I knew her own past was hardly as shiny as she claimed.

She ran, and I pursued. 

I saw others hanging her pieces, large canvases covered in tiles to match the patterns of the walls behind. Smudges across the walls that they hid with the monstrosities. As I ran, I followed her through various passages I’d had yet to see. Warm yellow-orange brick, same odd sunlight shafting through the windows, same worn rugs underfoot. 

Somehow as she sapped the color from the room in which I cornered her, some circle alcove set against the back wall, I saw another face. As she melted from view, two others came and stood at my shoulders. A bare-chested boy who looked decidedly attractive, and a girl beside him I didn’t recognize. I made some crack about whether or not they were together as we headed down a spiral staircase to the lower floors. An awkward laugh from him, a dagger-glare from her. Together, then, and not public… I hate those couples. Though my motivation was unknown even to me. (To be honest, looking back, I think I wanted to be him more than I desired anything else. Washboard abs don’t happen by accident, after all. And I prefer to have them than to be with those who do.)

When we reached the outdoors I was alone again, and the witchy artist was nowhere to be seen. I flew on quick feet into the wood, following the trail laid out before me. Off into the wood, lightly across the muddied and wilted-looking trail. My feet made no impressions in the dirt as I followed the glowing flowers that dimmed yet further as I passed. The dirt track unspooled before me, twisting through strange and desiccated trees as I passed. 

I came upon a new house on a hill, and saw nothing of good. I was mobbed as I tried to climb the stair to the door, by shuffling, blinded, beings who might have been teachers once. I drew cards for luck and against the rising tide of flesh and bone, and threw them… where they struck, blood did not appear… only more of the growing things that surrounded the house. Vines grew through their bodies, leaves and flowers overtook their melting flesh, and kept them from moving any further. As I jumped from the roof of the house’s porch, i landed much more heavily. It would seem I would no longer pass unnoticed. 

I found myself returned to the large, sprawling building made of stone. This time, when I had found my way through the passages and out into the open air, I found myself on the back deck. It matched, precisely, one I had experienced as a child. I found my companion there and my cat, and took up the two broom poles that lay against the enclosure next to the very, very deep and grown-over pool. 
“Escape then, and only two to do it on. Time to (static)” took over and the tinny, pitched ring of it still echoes in my ears. I took up the carved poles and jumped the fence to the bank of earth behind the pool. I did what I could to cut down as much of  the marshy long grass as possible and bound it to the blunt ended poles as possible, creating a green broom. Quick and quite words were said over these and the carvings glowed for a moment as, blinded, I came to a few moments later flying down the boundary upon which our original witch had flown. 

The boundary looked melted. The meadow and tangled wood I had come from looked twisted and as though it would disappear, like a painting under chemicals or chalk in the rain. To the right, lay the open planes and the grass and flowers that bent with a wind I could neither see nor feel. I saw her, far and away, and strangely, also coming from behind, her eyes like fire. I took off across the same path, low to the ground until the long flowering prairie closed overhead and there was nothing to my world but strange tunnels of woven greens and browns and whites and pinks and purples flying past my eyes.

In time, i found myself on the boundary of the creek, now swollen and raging with the autumn rains. It had flooded its banks, the well-known trails I had followed as a child and, where it spilled out across the fields, there formed a new river. It was this I followed, my cat clinging to the broom pole as I sped across the rippling water as closely as possible. The grasses hid me from view from above, and I saw no human shape following behind. No distant shriek of laughter. 

No sound at all save for the wind, and the stream below me, and no sight but the great grey clouds and the barest peak of starlight shining down across the water to turn its edges silver and gold in the dark. 

I found myself in another den I knew well from childhood. Another tree with deep and tangled roots, and spreading bare branches stripped by wind and autumn’s chilly embrace. There was frost on the ground when I woke, and the cat was nowhere to be seen. The roots embraced me, the fallen leaves in drifts hiding me from view, as the growing vinery traced with ice held it all tightly to itself. 

There I huddled, clutching at the ground, shining things scattered through the loose and crumbling black earth, coins and more precious things sunk into the loam and leaf rot mere inches from the water that raced by just a breadth away from my feet. 

Despairing, I looked up. I woke.

Dreaming 8/27/18

I woke in a clearing that may or may not have been The Clearing.

Every tree was choked in vines and I could hear the shrieking of what might have been only monkeys but might have been something Else entirely. The whole of my vision made it look as though the entire world only existed in shades of brown, green, and grey. I could not see the sky, no matter how I tried to look upwards through the branches, or out to the edges of the jungle. There was nothing but the trees, long and tangled undergrowth and everywhere the same vines choking the life out of it all.

I had left an earlier Dream of the Estate to get here. A pleasant atmosphere and better company for the most part. I had not left of my own volition, I had been compelled. The three men I left behind, and the pews full of people would just have to understand. I certainly felt no shame in their company, nor had I when the pews began to fill as we took our sweet time before or on the altar. Blasphemy is its own sweetness, and I take mine where I can find it some days.

It felt oddly familiar, in the same way that most Dreaming feels familiar. Like I should know where I am, or that it will come to me if I just wait for long enough. I was climbing through trees that were tangled and covered in the vines. Every so often, I found a desiccated animal corpse in the trees, wrapped and choked in vines as if they’d been used as a water source. I’m amazed now, looking back on it in the Waking, that I did not react with more disgust or recoil in horror. 

People were talking around me in a language I did not understand but understood all the same. They wanted me to go to the Top; the Tree? the Mountain? I don’t remember or perhaps I never really knew; and talk to Mother.

I did not want to go. I knew even then what people would say of me if I followed where they led. If I did as I knew I was going to be forced to. If I met who I would be forced to meet. I wanted to leave. I found I could not. No method open to me worked despite my struggle. 

These people, in skins and leather and weaving, their bodies covered in mud and paint, their hair knotted and plaited ornately and ALSO coated in the same mud or paint were the very opposite of me. No matter what Aspect I wear, or what Witness I am called upon to wrap around me like a cloak, but that is not what made me recoil. It was the known response I would receive should I speak of what happened. I am still being compelled to write about it. To share. I want to leave, but I am Awake now and I cannot. 

The next thing I knew, I was halfway up the Tree. Following these People higher and higher; scrambling over root and rock alike. Trying to ignore what is held in branch and vine.

When we reached the top, there was a small knot of people who had made it. Others we’d lost or left behind or they’d given up. Maybe it was the difficulty of the climb, maybe it was the horror of seeing something drained of life before your eyes. I don’t and probably never will know for sure.

We came to a ledge, wrapped in roots, branches covered in lichen and dripping moss like grey-green curtains. We found a pool, set in the face of the green-grey cliff face. The rim came just above my navel and the inside was coated in what looked like yellow ochre. A seeping, poisonous, sulfuric yellow. 

In it, a wizened old woman sat, crouched, like a frog. Her wrinkled skin was as brown as the earth beneath my feet, her hair was tangled with more of the vines and leaves, thin and grey and matted down her back and shoulders. When she lifted her head, I could see the vines growing beneath her skin.

In spite of how clear the water was; crystalline and cold; I couldn’t see the bottom. I don’t know whether it was algae, silt, leaves or some other reason; but I could not see the Woman below the shoulders. She looked as though she were absorbing the water, and being absorbed at the same time. Taking from and giving to the Tree and the vines that strangled and grasped at it.

Immediately upon taking this in I was uncomfortable and on edge. I knew what would be required of me without being told, and I had half a mind to refuse. To back away and hurl myself into the void beyond the trees and the cliff face. To find some Beyond to entrust my long fall and eventual death. I knew it would be useless. The trees would never end, and the cliff face was a lie or a supposition- I had not seen the sky since the Dream began.

Instead, the same compulsion began anew and I was driven forward, and the People surrounding me drew back.

When She spoke it was as rough as bark and as thunderous as the mountain’s tectonic energy that had given it birth. As silent and imperious as a deep forest pool. Inexorable. Commanding. 

There was no way for me to resist as my arms were, untouched, plunged into the water to the elbows. I wanted to scream. There was only silence.

Immediately there was a pulling sensation, as though blood was being drawn from my veins. The water and the Woman remained the same, no light no red no new change in feeling or expression. I wanted to fight, to pull away, but I couldn’t move! The draw was stronger than iron chains and bound me fast. I could do nothing but struggle mentally and try again and again to scream.

When she released me, I could breathe again. I hadn’t realized I had stopped. She poured more water over my hands, and I saw that hers had the same vines and leaves growing beneath the skin. Her nails were black, and the water was numbingly cold. 

She spoke or I heard or I was made to understand that now I was in the water and the water was in me. Chosen, and no way back. Caught, like a rat in a trap no matter what I thought or felt or wanted for myself. Helpless, and both terrified and enraged by it.

Someone younger and narrower of body than I was brought forth. Struggling, water was poured over their hands as well. I neither heard nor understood what was said, if anything. I wonder now, in the Waking, whether the water pulling out and rushing in was to make me acceptable, or wash something else away so I could receive the same, dubious, blessing. 

I wonder if that was why I was made to go first.

I have the impression fires and darkness, keeping the prowling things at bay. I know She will eventually be consumed, though she is Older than Old. I don’t want to know. I want to leave. I cannot. I don’t. 

I wake to the Dreaming again at the base of the mountain-tree. My hands do not work, and I am uncomfortable beyond measure. It burns in my veins and I want to rip the skin from my hands. It will not leave me, and I cannot leave it. I want more than anything to leave the Dream. I cannot. I don’t. 

The earth felt like it was vibrating beneath me, and I couldn’t see; like I was no longer wearing my glasses. I felt crazed. Like I was searching for something. Supposed to do something. Seek something out before it was too late. Something required that I’d forgotten.

I woke from the Dreaming uncomfortable, disoriented, nauseous, and knowing i don’t want to talk about this. I don’t want to deal with whatever aftermath it drags in its wake. I still feel compelled to write out the details and to post it. 

I hope this is enough.