The View from the Top of the Mountain

It was one of those dreams that makes a nonsensical jump that, because you’re in the dream, makes sense to you at the time.

I was watching this show, some outdoorsy adventure thing, where people were hand by hand “climbing” these zip lines set up in odd places.  One of which was on this mountain.

Next thing I know I’m on the mountain Climbing it via zip line.  Then I see her.  At first I don’t realize what she is exactly.  I haven’t seen her in years.  She had been my one true love.  She is young and beautiful and happy, just like I remember her in her prime.  I walk around the mountain, talking to her and enjoying life.  We climb to the top of the mountain using the zip line and I find a place overlooking two beautiful lakes and lush greenery and I turn to show it to her.  I have never felt so happy.  But even though she is still there, she doesn’t respond.  I try to talk to her, but there’s no reaction.  Then I notice a second version of her, coexisting with the first.  the two are as oblivious to each other as they are to me.

The second “simulation” as I learn to call them, is more like she was when she asked me to leave her life.  This version is sullen and sulky and appears to be very depressed.  She’s maybe two years older than the first one.  There’s numerous scars on her arms, which she does nothing to hide, a heavy bruise on her cheek, of relatively unknown origin, and a hickey on her neck, which I would guess has the same origin as the bruise.  She’s like the sun to me in that I cannot look at her directly, or it hurts too much.  But I observe the two of them and the ways they interact with the environment.  number one is thinner, most likely because she is more energetic and active, though when she does sit to rest she tends to do so at a high or more precarious elevation, such as atop a balance beam or on a small hill.

I look away from them for a bit.  As I am turning away I make brief eye contact with number two and see what I believe to be a flash of recognition in her eyes.  But I have no way of knowing if she realizes that I’m even there, in all this time this would be the most recognition she’s shown me.  I look out over the beautiful valley.  On a plateau below me I see a pink fox running through a glade.  The animal strikes me as beautiful.  A young girl in Indian grab in chasing the fox carefree.  Number one joins her, chasing the fox in a way much like a young child would chase a squirrel.  

I would have thought a pink fox was such a rare occurrence that I would never see one again but only seconds later there’s another.  An older version of the Indian girl stalks behind it with a bow, slow and calculated.  Ultimately she kills the fox with the bow and collects it.

I reflect on all that I’ve seen.  Isn’t it curious, the nature of life, I ask myself.

There’s a tap on my shoulder.  I turn.  It’s her.  A few years older, a few pounds heavier especially around the middle.  She looks neither happy nor sad, just there.  I talk to her.  She can see number one and number two just like I can and I discuss with her my observations of them.  Of her.  We walk all through the mountain discussing this, until we find ourselves back at the top next to number two, who is now openly crying.

She agrees with my observations, she says she wishes that she can go back to being that happy little girl again, and I reach out my hand and reply that she can.  To answer she pulls up her shirt a little to expose a growing gut and a brown hand shaped bruise.

She says, “You can feel Jason’s fist.”  I become paralyzed in anger.  How could someone do this to her.  She reaches out for my hand and pulls it to her belly, which despite it’s size is remarkably tight.  The I feel the little fist graze past my palm.  

I start to cry and take off in a run over the edge of the mountain.  

On the way to the ground, I lament, “What scenery.”