… join the adventuree…

in it, you are walking either in late afternoon or early evening, dawn or twilight, cockcrow or gloaming, daybreak or dusklight—the day’s first or final sigh—walking through a wooded place, jungly place, along a road that curves slightly left. As you walk and walk from within the trees comes half-familiar melodies, strange people, mad love, the end of music itself.

Then you come upon a gate.

You peer through the metal slats but beyond, in the dark density of foliage and shrub, you cannot see what waits. Shortly, you hear a shuffling sound, and moments later a man comes to the gate. Though his face is dream-blurred you sense—perhaps it’s how he holds his hands—that he is pleased to see you. Through the slats he offers handshake and his fingers are soft, and he opens the gate and leads you into the property. You pass a garden. Several fountains. Statues without heads. You approach a lovely house. He leads you into a vast library,leaves you a moment, and another, and another. There is a desk. As you wait, you go to it, and there, on the desk, you find a book—and you reach to open the book—and then a voice says a word—

You wake up without remembering what has been spoken.

These are the days when you often have this same dream. It is unsettling, and you wonder at the dream-world, from where it’s come and why. What is reaching out from inside your mind? Or is it even from your mind–can dreams come from something beyond rather than within? Might the dream-mind be, after all, the ancient connection to the spiritus mundi—to all humankind?

What are they trying to tell you, to warn you?

In the days that follow, more alarmingly, you take to sleep-walking. One day you wake up and find yourself in the hall adjacent to the library, holding a book turned upside down. When you turn it upright, the words remain upside down, no matter how many times you turn it. Another, you find yourself outside in the garden at dawn, chewing a bit of mango you’ve found on the jungle floor. It’s green, bitter, and you know that this is not how things used to be, this is not the same as things were. How did you get here? A few times you even find yourself sleeping outdoors, your clothes flung away, you are naked near the beach, the ocean, beside a fish pond, as when you first arrived to this place. But the ponds are empty now. No fish to gaze at you.

Days go by, filled with these frustrating dreams, ending each time a single word short of understanding. You are constantly tired. You read a little less each evening, have an extra glass of wine, hoping it will help get you through the night. It never does. The sight of your garden – already it’s beginning to go to seed – frustrates you, but you do nothing to bring it into its former lovely glory, you don’t have the energy, and besides, what does it matter? You’ve already done the work once—why keep doing it over and over again, and for whom?

One evening a strange chirping sounds in the house, just as you’re nodding off to sleep. (You haven’t even eaten dinner, you’ve begun taking an even earlier glass of wine.) The chirping startles you. You shove the unread book off your lap and it clatters to the floor. You peer around the study. The chirp emanates from the black thing on the desk, a contraption that arrived months ago. You lift it, and a small voice emerges from one cupped end.

“Are you there? Well, decide already,” the voice says. “Are you coming to the meeting?”

You are quiet. Who is this, you wonder? Plus it sounds so tiring, a meeting. Yet—

“Anyway, it’s in two days, Los Angeles. I’ll text you the hotel information. Hope to see you there!”

A click and the voice is gone, and you are alone again.

You set the object back in its cradle.

You toe the book fallen to the floor, flipping over, curious what you were even reading.

The cover is a reflective material that shows only a warped version of you.

You kick the book away and sigh. Beyond the walls, you can hear the ever-maddening sounds of surf.

In some ways it is tempting to do nothing, to remain here, safe and calm in this anodyne and placid place.

Yet.

Why not get out of here, LA is nice this time of year.

Eh, worry about doing something later. For now, noting. Don’t feel bad–feel proud. Action is overrated, and who needs society. Settle in. Put on nightclothes, but maybe tonight let’s put the wine away, make a cuppa. Take another book off the shelf, one you haven’t read, something that grabs your attention: Read me! I’ll be great! Open it. Feel that thrill of first-page adventure, a thing new, entirely, to you …

… and immediately, a hand-written note flutters out.