While driving the backroads last night, I cranked up my stereo
and let the music take me where it wanted to go.
I'd heard the songs before, but I began hearing a different tune.
Must've had earplugs in before. I drove on, and the music played me.
When I'd driven as far as I could, and lost myself completely down those roads,
I pulled over at some strange station I'd never seen before.
I thought I'd sit a while there and rest, do a little reading from
the book I've been writing. Damn my eyes for seeing words there I'd never
read before. My book was writing me, I had never said a word.
I thought for a while about how you can wake up one day, hear the same song,
read the same words, and they tell you something you've never known before.
I realized then, I'd been driving with my eyes half closed.
Then, as the sun came up, I saw with my naked eyes a strange landscape I had never seen before.
Road signs were everywhere. One showed I was on I-9, another read, 'Welcome to Idaho'.
I heard gentle clouds roll on by, and felt alone in my wanderings.
I saw paint blistering off the walls of some hotel, and wondered who would save me.
I thought about wicked games,and felt accused. I saw crossroads, up ahead,
with a honky tonk on one side, wanted to go inside and order a case of finest wine.
I felt so alone, sitting in my rudderless boat (you know how dreams can go).
Then I looked up, saw a man standing at the crossroads
with a golden hammer in his hand. I wondered if i knew this man,
and wanted him in my boat with me, to sail on the uncharted seas.
I wanted to drown in a deep blue bottomless pool with him. Then I wanted to
accuse him, for walking into my dream, for standing in the middle of my aloneness.
I looked up at the sky (it was night again, as dreams go) and saw the
stars in the sky. I wondered if the stars were real, or painted on
some false ceiling. I wanted to climb a ladder and break through,
to find true. I wanted to tear down the veils that kept me from
knowing all the secrets of the universe, to burn up the clouds
that hid the sun. Then I wondered again if the sun was already
shining, if my rudderless boat was being guided by the soothsayer
of dreams. And I wanted to know if this dream was a nightmare, just a picture
show, or some prophetic vision.
I felt pushed and pulled, with winds blowing a strong gale, and wanted to know if they blew from
the east or the west, but I could not tell, I'd dropped my compass miles back.
I wondered what the man was thinking, if he saw the same strange landscape.
I wondered if he had driven me here, or if we had sailed here together, our backs to one another.
I turned my radio on again, but only heard static, and wished that I could find the perfect song,
to express exactly the strangeness of this tale, to sing the truth.
I wondered again if I was dreaming or awake, if my ears
were hearing the real music in songs, if my eyes were reading
lines as they were written, or if I was still asleep, only dreaming.
Sometimes, when you wake up, you just
want to go back to sleep, and dream a little longer. And sometimes
you think you've woken up, but you are still dreaming. How do
you know the difference? How can you ever tell? And where is
a good soothsayer when you need one?
I'm still wondering.
--bruised orange
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