winter dream

Sometimes a dream is so potent that you wait, awake, in bed for a bit - leaving the bedroom would begin the tide of the new day, its occurances slowly bleeding the colors out of it until the dream retains only the factual plot you have compelled yourself to remember, and losing the mood + tone it left you in, the real meat of it.

So it is with last night's dream - the dream of the tiger. it was one blip within a series, though i can only remember this one instance. I was hiking alone, something I am prone to do in my wakened life, but in a seemingly boundless forest. I came upon a mirror in the woods, one similar to those provided for drivers approaching sharp turns and hidden driveways and upon looking into it I saw a bear crossing the trail behind me. Turning to face it head on, I watched as it halted its passage across the trail and turn to look at me. I recalled piecemeal sayings of old proverbial boy scout leaders past and crouched into a ball, sitting on the ground with my arms wrapped around my legs, breathing hard into the dark center of my self-enclosure. 

The fear was palpable, overwhelming as it so often is in nightmares, and i peeked up over my kneecaps through a crack in my eyelids to witness that the bear which was walking - no, prowling - towards me was now a tiger. 

Thoughts of impending death, teeth, flesh, etc.

My "appear as a lifeless ball of flesh" method may be touted to work in the presence of bears, but has absolutely no utility in defense against tigers.

And so I sat crouched, enduring an unimaginable wash of terror and thought of what a pathetic consolation it was to tell myself that "cats usually like me". I was certainly going to be torn to shreds despite my camaraderie with ordinary housecats. But the tiger circled me, calculating, and I sat in my bath of fear until I realized that the tiger was sitting now, right beside me. Then, as if I weren't already at the peak of terror, the tiger rested its chin on my shoulder, purring like a V8 engine straight into my right ear. For what seemed like an eternity I waited for it to decide to take its first bite, wondering if it ever would, or if it had simply presented this gesture as some sort of recognition of my fear, a consolation. 

From this eternity of uncertainty, I woke up.