Art of Seeking

old dreams new

It’s late at night on a far- away shore. The moonlight is so strong that flashlights aren’t necessary. I’m not alone- I’m talking to others around me, but I don’t know who they are.
Talking about the stones we’re walking on.

They are black- volcanic, I think. But they aren’t just stones, they are ruins. There is something important here, I can feel it.

The tide is coming in, the waves are crashing. Then, I see it. Something that looks like carving in the stone.

I call the others over. We all begin to examine the stones. Then, for some reason I don’t know, I look up.

A huge, flat, rectangle stone is on the ground. It looks to me like a door. I walk toward it, I walk on it. The waves are crashing louder.

Someone is standing in front of me, a man. An authority. He’s saying we need to go, but we’ll return.

But I don’t want to go. I feel there’s something here I need to know…

I woke from this dream many years ago.
Then today, in class, it all came flooding back to me when Dr. Haagen Klaus showed us pictures of Peru.

And there it was- the rocks, the beach, the flat stone, everything. Ruins soon to be excavated. The only difference was, the picture had been taken during the day.

I talked to him after class about going to Peru, but the next two excavations are full. However, he said he can help me study those ruins for my Master’s.

Literally, a dream come true. I can’t wait.

(*NOTE: I did my best to find stones in my picture archives that look like the ones in my dream, but this was as close as I got. The stones in my dream were all black.)

last night’s dream

I was just minding my own business, trying to find work. It was getting frustrating, as it usually does for a lone mute with a face too pretty for a boy’s.
A blacksmith just laughed at me and said something in his language that boomed across the hills and probably frightened sheep twenty miles away.
I wished I could do more than grunt.
There was a fair in town, so I headed toward it. I wandered among the colorful exhibits and pretty tents flapping slightly in the morning breeze, and tried to communicate with the people there at the booths. I would ask them about their trades and if I could be of some help, but the ones who could actually figure out what I was trying to say through my awkward gestures just turned me away. A crude woman ruffled my strawberry blonde hair, pinched my fair skin, and said she knew a man who would pay me for my company. That made me angry, and I nearly threw a fit- then a plain woman with long dirty blonde hair and a strong jaw put her arm around me. “I think you can find a job at the castle,” she told me in a soft voice while giving the crude woman and her grinning consort a hard stare. She led me away.
The King’s home was apparently also a welfare office of sorts. I waited in a stone room while the woman talked to one of four apparently very busy people behind a counter, their faces as stony as their surroundings. One nodded and the woman came back. “They’ve got one position left- washing dishes,” she said. It wasn’t as if I had a choice.
Hours later, I’m still scrubbing dishes. I hate it. I was worth so much more, if anyone would give me a chance, but hey, if you can’t talk, you’re really nothing more than an animal. An animal who can wash dishes and perform menial tasks.
I was frustratingly attempting to scrape a piece of food from a fancy little dish when the woman came in. She helped me wash the dishes. She ended up finishing the rest of the dishes while I worked on that one stupid dish. The she led me from the room and walked me back to my grass hut.
She looked around at my carvings and looked back at me, her face a question. I took out a piece of wood and my knife, and began to carve the image of her face into it. I handed it back to her. The question in her face turned to amazement, and the next day, she took me back to the castle.
We’re back at the same counter, and she’s showing them the carving and pointing at me. An escort is called, and I’m led up a flight of stairs, through a labyrinth of increasingly elaborate halls and steps.
That night, I’m carving again, only this time the face I am etching into the wood is the King’s.

I’m no longer the boy, but the woman.
The castle where I work and live has everything we need, including a hospital. I’ve been ill for some time, and they think they know why.
I’m in the gown, lying on the surgery bed. The IV drips a fluid into me. The doctor adds something to the fluid, and I ask him if it is the anesthetic. He doesn’t respond.
I wake up in the same hospital bed, the same room, and it’s dark. The doctor has turned off the light, but the sounds of the hospital still waft through the open door.

Ode to Sprinklers

I always know I should be sleeping when I hear the sprinklers come on. It’s usually around midnight…
When I was a teenager, running away from home all the time, I used to wander around all night.
I had to avoid a lot of sprinklers.
There were a lot of golf courses out there, with lots of sprinklers. I walked everywhere. Once I walked across four cities.
When you’ve walked that far, the sprinklers are kind of nice.
I spent a lot of time by myself. That’s probably why, when the sprinklers come on, I feel a little melancholy.
Of course, there were worse things I was avoiding.
Drug addicts, drunks, cops, and other night life.
And so I went on alone.
Walking gives me time to think.
Now, the sound of the sprinklers is like Pavlov’s bell to my synapses.
I’m alone. The sprinklers are on. I’ll be walking until daybreak, when I’ll feel safe enough to crash on a park bench unmolested.
What’s on my mind?
Well, when you’re just surviving, you don’t think about boys. Even if you’re a teenager.
You don’t think about food, ’cause you’ll go nuts.
I would think about the ocean. The sky. The stars. What my friends were up to. Where I was going, what I would do when I got there.
Why golfers wear such hideous clothes when they have so much money. Everything I own is in the bag on my shoulder, and I can dress better than that.
I thought about rocks, and waterfalls, and trees. Mountains.
The sound of the sprinklers imitates the sound of a waterfall a mile or so away.
I thought a lot about how much everyone despised me, just because I didn’t think like them, act like them, or want to. Ever.
I thought about bread.
About grass. Swimming. The moon.
I waited for a sign, an omen, a gift.
And to this day, until the sprinklers outside my window turn off,
I can’t sleep.