During the descent I realized the bizarre, carpeted, runway was also the only way to get back up. It was yellow, like me. The confident grip of parked tires offered the illusion that I too could stick to the practically vertical plank in the event that I needed to return. Where are we going? To the beach under the hotel.

For years now these dreams of semi-permanence replay in a kind of sarcastic metaphor. Dear Universe, I quite get it. This stay is temporary. Then why bother? I wonder if Hilfiger feels a similar discontent about his fifty million dollar Plaza flat. We all checkout eventually Tommy, but the question is, did we live today?

My stomach was fluttering as I leaned into the heels of my feet for fear that I might fall off and out of gravity into nothingness. Parched for the oasis below, the thought of the climb that awaited my return made my veins itch. I was stuck between two choices and terrified equally of both. Where is the rest room?

Mere feet from jumping into the granular sand below, I decided to turn around and claw my way back up. The beach suddenly felt like a set; a plastic rendition of something true which I realized didn’t exist at the bottom but rather, at the top. I’d started from a beginning which was neither here nor there. This oasis, while tempting, was nothing more than a distraction in disguise.

She watched me from the end of the path and tried coaxing me down. She’d put herself in my clothes in some attempt to gain trust or lure me with familiarity but nothing down there felt familiar. It looked dark, stale, staged and I wouldn’t settle for anything but bright, raw, rare.

I was afraid of their need to see me fail. I was afraid of my fear of being attached to nothing, afraid of the physical pain of falling off the earth and crashing out of existence. I was afraid of wasting precious energy clawing my way towards a solid ground which may not even exist. I was scared of everything I refused to see.

Gripping the jaundice and balding rug with peeling fingertips, I inched my body towards invisible safety because of some holy ghost possessing me with hope. Plastic, cupped footholds lined the walls at inconsistent intervals, as if god or the universe set me up for a dare. By the way, prayer is signing up for a lesson not a lessen. If you pray for love and mercy god doesn’t Fed-ex relief, instead he peppers you with opportunities to be loving and merciful. So there I was, crawling on bleeding knees towards merciful opportunity.

Unseen hands hung from either hip, tugging me towards an easy out, whispering nightmares in my ear. They never shut up. Does it hurt to let go? I thought you wanted me to surrender to my highest good? Do you enjoy watching us wrestle with your metaphors? I’m exhausted! Hungry! Horrified! Help!!!!

He didn’t do anything I could feel or see in part because I kept my eyes focused on the patch in front of my face. Looking down or above felt fraught with the risk of freezing in one place forever. I’m reaching for you. Will you ever reach back? Be concrete, brick, stone, real, something tangible instead of a dream, please. I inched higher and harder from a force within each of my ten toes, gripping the cosmic tarmac with literal crazy glue. Propelled by a magnetic force willed from within, towards a place even torn faith believed existed.

Slapping my right arm above my head I felt the bend in what had seemed like an eternity of straight; a landing place. With both hands now perched on the edge of this precarious parking strip, I hurled myself up and onto the next ledge.

xo

It might never end until it does. I was talking to a friend yesterday about how God answers prayers with lessons and how that’s maddening, especially when we pray for something specific; as if God is some kind of spiritual ATM. What up G. Can you clean my house with magic and suck all the calories out of food? Thanks dude. No. Anyway, I liked that in this dream, in spite of being petrified, I got to solid ground. Off to dream more posts.