The unfettered land of
dreams, indeed what a curious place. The other day while roaming through sunlit
dales and amidst craggy stones standing lonesome in the windswept plains I saw
before me a magnificent shoreline.
Far as
the eye could see it stretched, further than the horizon, the hushing dancing
green grass kept from the swirling blue of the infinite deep by a wall of soft
gritty white.
I stepped
upon the shore, delighted by the soft warmth into which my feet had sunk and
set out upon the golden road. Wither and whence I went I knew not, for it does
not matter in dreams. As I suppose too... It doesn't really matter in flesh.
For many
a languid hour I walked along the shore of dreams, following the Sun, devouring
the salty breeze. Occasionally I would wade over mountainous dunes in whose
shallows I found piles of bone and shell. The gloriously fashioned, thrice
tubed spinal column of a sea bird lay next to a multitude of curling empty
winkles. Mermaids ears, the abalone shells with their glistering radiant coats
lay, like priceless jewels, half buried in the dunes. Dried sponges and seaweed
too, in whose still-damp depths roamed skittering crabs and still stranger
denizens of the shoreline. Sand flies flitted on the occasional fish and once,
the unfortunate carcass of a baby seal. Its blubbery flesh all pale and its
eyes long since glazed. Without the vitality of life it was to be picked clean
by the scuttering, wriggling, buzzing legions of the sands. Jellyfish a plenty
sat like navy blue bubbles, or rather, like small dejected balloons on the
sand.
Sometimes the wind
would pick up and the sand would flit and sting my shins and knees. But it did
not matter in dreams. I kept on and on after the Sun along the endless shore.
Wither and whence did not matter. Sometimes I happened across beautiful monasteries
of rock, volcanic I like to think. In whose craggy and wonderful depths I found
the bountiful caress of sticky, slippery life. Polyps and urchins, crabs and
fish haunted the rocky causeways. Algae and weeds of innumerable description,
elegantly ruffled and rubbery grew here and there like draping vine and velvety
grass. Monstrous crabs creaked their subtle way in the crevices and cracks.
Octopi and, again, once a spotted eel of wonderful resilience did gawk at me
with their strange dumb eyes. So alien and cold yet so full of wisdom and the
taste of something more. Something untouched by man. Rude seagulls did flap and
cry and call all about. Feasting on the bounty of trapped fish and arthropod.
After a long while of
climbing, slipping and examining I was once more on the golden road. Free from
the strange sweet land of the black rock. In the distance a pendulous storm had
grown. Its grim face leering over the road, betraying its magnificent power. Against
this desolation it looked immense. The fury of the sky would soon bleed onto
this, this beach of life...