Wading through the dark waters

The dream last night, or what I still remember 17 hours later:

Water everywhere.

Driving along on a highway along the waters’ edge, with small beach fronts to the right. Someone is telling me about it. Expensive, I imagine, though they are hardly little strips of land, with some sand, enough room for a gazebo-like tent right along the water. A lake, I’m told. Separated from the highway by a guardrail. This doesn’t stop the car I’m in from going off the road into the sand, gazing too long at the beach, I drive into it. Back on the road soon, a short scare.

Later in the dream, another body of water, a wide shallow stream. It darkens, deepens as I look further on. But nearby it is inches deep, less than a foot. We, me and others, are walking through it. A beaver/otter/woodchuck is swimming in it close to us. A huge frog, larger than a dinner plate is sitting on the mud by the water, full grown but still sporting part of its tail. It hops in the water and swims. The beaver-thing is swimming close to it. I know what will happen but dread it, not wanting to see it. The beaver swims after the frog and bites into it, the water turning a dark, cloudy red.

Now out of the water, behind or next to some buildings. The landscape is still the same. I think it is the West somewhere. We see so much sky and all around is only dried mud, perhaps mountains in the distance, far away. But we are on this dried mud behind one pink and one blue stucco (maybe) building. Another frog is there, smaller, adult, I catch it easily. Pick it up and it looks like it has some kind of milky coating. Maybe to keep it from drying out.

That’s it.

Now, as I was thinking of the dreams this morning, the scene with the beaver and the frog struck me. I think I am the frog. I have always loved them and even jumped around the house like a frog. I’m fully grown, but for my tail, this childhood relic that I can’t shake. I am in my element, but there is one better, or some threat. I wondered that I might be seeing my own death. I don’t like to think that that’s it, but I don’t know what to make of it.

The one saving feature is that the frog image returns in a less habitable environment (not water this time), but it’s managed to insulate itself from its greatest threat, which, in the second scenario is the dry heat, which would also kill the frog by drying it out.

Consider, too, the mythic importance of water, approaching, crossing, the waters of the underworld in order to be born again or renewed for the coming year (if looking at as a cycle).

Oddly, today I actually did run into/over something in the road while driving with Colin on our way home from soccer practice. As in my dream, I am distracted by something on our right, in this case, a “road closed” sign which, as I was looking at it, didn’t really seem to blocking the part of the road it was supposed to. In my distraction, I ran over the base of one of those orange construction barrels (the barrel was nowhere).

No frogs seen today, though.

Why so pale and wan fond lover?

The more I think about writing, the less I think my life worth writing about? True, it is my life, but it is not "high" life.

The long black vessels of the Greeks
The chains wrapped around a slaves' feet
The gunpowder crack of revolution
The long journey over the dangerous plains.

These are not my experiences. They are not the experiences of my peers. We know only scant labor, fears mostly imaginary, dangers mostly promoted by the news. We are a scattered, lesser people, driven away from the true language we may have once spoken: clear cries at the sight of another morning. How true it must have once been that the Lord's mercies are renewed every morning.

Today, we take our blessings, make our own miracles, thank you. We don't need help like we once did. We are the eye in the sky, the lighthouse at the top of the world. We see all, know all and can't find the country on the map.

What is worth the mention of us? Nothing great. Are we to memorialize the non-greatness of this day, the paltry portions of courage we have brought to our communal table? Are we to remember our own indifference to human suffering as close as the next room, as far as Africa is from our hearts?

Endless lines, buckets of ink, and the sweat of too many brows have poured forth on this great mystery: how a people with nearly everything can be satisfied with nothing, can only hope to engorge their greed souls with the ever-present hope of more. Such terrible food. And what small portions.

We want to read about struggle. We want to see adversity overcome against all odds. We even want to see a qualified success, some glimpse of the spirit that we sometimes need to know we might have once had ourselves if not for the deadening weight of the every day.

Strange days. Shaken and stirred but only in the teapots. We live a butterfly effect daily. We flap our lips, a storm surges, great typhoon over Japan. We eat our own coal and drink piss to stay alive. We can be that hungry, that thirsty. Somewhere. A snug misunderstatement of a life in this landlocked city. This country isolated by wide waters. We won't always be so safe and yet be afraid.

Maybe, maybe we will actually be in danger. May have our lives on the deadline of our times and have to brave face it. Today, that's a future memory. Tomorrow, it may be the present task. I wait. I order the flies about me about. Asking them to take a small cloak to cover the eye of night. Let my deeds be dark. Let all the sordid morsels make a meal of this resistance we feel.