dream 2

I was walking up a hill at golden hour, and at the top was a white tree blooming wide against a blue and pink sky. it was such a beautiful image that I thought to capture it on camera, so I ran home to my house, and the inside was slightly altered that it was in reality, but the details of it I cannot quite recall. I couldn't find my phone there either until I realized it was in my back pocket the whole time, so I went back out dressed in pajamas and the blue crocs I wear while walking the neighborhood. I wanted to run to the site so that I wouldn't lose the image to the approaching twilight, but when I tried I could only move in slow sprints, as if my legs were weighed down or suddenly foreign to the physics of this earth. But I kept on, extending leg after leg like I was walking through the thickness of water. And I gazed at the hill from afar and the tree was still there but the sky was orange, and I thought to myself that it would still make a beautiful picture, so I pushed onward to the top. But strangely, once I made it onto the hill, the scene had transformed so dramatically that even my dream consciousness was confused and bewildered. I was now standing before some kind of house that was burning, but it wasn't a ravenous flame. There were sparks and smoke and a general glow of fire but no flames. There was a fireworks in the distance that I thought may have ignited the present space, but other than the light of embers the sky was dark and purpled and grey. After a few minutes of gazing and trying to angle out different photographs, I felt something land on my shoulder. I looked at it was a crow. I took out my phone to take a self portrait, but once I turned the camera towards myself and the creature I realized that it was actually a vulture. Right then it tried to pierce my neck with its beak to kill me so that I could devour me, but I held its beak in my hands as it struggled to break me or my grip. Once again it attempted to stab me and once again I restrained it, but this time I took its neck in my hands and started to wring its neck. I threw the vulture on the ground and was about to stomp its head and body but I couldn't, feeling devastated at this act of cruelty I was about to commit. I felt it deeply and innately, a twisting of my insides and my conscience, yet I didn't understand the contradiction of my feelings, trading the vulture's death for my survival. And at that pained, conflicted moment, I woke...


- January 22, 2019