(Some of this is real, some is from a dream state, and some is from astral travel. I don't care to discern which right now.)


I sometimes dream that I go to a city. It’s different than cities here though. The people are scattered and few. They never smile and rarely cry. They stare, the way an animal stares when you stumble upon it and for a moment it sizes you up. There is no thought in that moment, only being. Reacting. They never speak. They think and feel and somehow you know. And you do the same. You can feel the place you’re in almost as if it were an extension of yourself. I’ve been here many times. Sometimes I walk it as if I belong. Other times there is context. I have been chased and hunted here. I have crawled small tunnels with others who were in similar predicaments. And often when they see us they do not need to wonder. They know and we know they know.

I wonder if this is the same city I visited the ruins of as a child. I had this exact same dream multiple times. Will it come true? I wandered the remains in tattered clothes, only seeing other children. We would gather on a hill of green – the only color amidst the gray. We would stand in a circle and stare and think thoughts which had no words and could never be recognized. And as one there was consensus, almost as if no thought took place at all. And we would go to a building. There were papers and pencils and fax machines, and we did not understand. Then there was an attack of some dark being and everything would be chaos. My vision would go in the panic and only return after I had gotten back to the hill. We would stare and there would be gaps in the circle of missing children. Then it would repeat itself.

Have any of you ever been here? I can not decide whether it would be comforting to know others had, or if it would diminish the experience to know people from this world could reach that other place.

This way of thinking and being was always far more natural. When I was younger I would have sudden hits – mixes of thought and emotion which could never be translated but represented what would be the equivalent of a word or phrase there. It would fill my body and I would try to grasp it, but there was no ability for this body to remember. So it would escape me. It’s always slept somewhere in my subconscious though. It comes out in the cold stillness of winter air between breaths, and sometimes through the still moments of early dawn.

I have tried to walk through the world feeling the world. Worked for it. But as I have, I have gotten further from the music I danced to which others could not hear. Then the dreams return and I fall to my knees and cry in repentance. I lash out like a caged animal at the physical thing I am trapped in. At the solid world without soul and words without thought or meaning. I glimpse the portals out and my breath catches. I know I was never meant to end up here. The gift and curse of a runner. And while I love those I’ve met here, I long to go home.

I only wonder, when I’m there, if I’ll dream of toasters and full streets and a spoken language I can no longer remember.