mictlan

 I dreamed that I slept. Incongruously, I was smoking a cigarette. And I dreamed that I smoked it down to the filter, and held it lengthwise between finger and thumb the way you would not hold a cigarette. And I dreamed that I wasn't burned, but in my sleepiness, I dropped it anyway.

And in my dream, I thought of fire, spreading patchily through the mat's dry water hyacinth fibre, and heard the thin screams of Eichornia crassipes, their vegetable throats cracking in the heat.

So I dreamed that I leapt up in haste and looked for the fallen smoulderer. But it was gone, and there was no smoke or flame, and in my dream I thought this deeply suspicious. So suspicious, in fact, that I began to suspect that I was dreaming.

And I dreamed that I woke up, and wrote it all down.

Earlier today, I was walking down the street in the evening- a mostly deserted  street, all shadows and falling leaves. And it suddenly struck me that I was real, that I existed. That there were people in the world who knew me by name and face, that there were streets I knew in asphalt and cobblestone.

It's a strange thing to suddenly be faced with the fact of your existence. Not unpleasant, and not even frightening, but strange. The world tilts and teeters under your foot, raised as it was for a step; you wonder briefly if the trembling earth will be in the right place by the time you place it down again.

Then you take your step, and the world rightens, and as you walk, under your feet you can feel it purring.

posted by: mictlantecuhtli at 23:29 | link | comments (7) |

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