Balloons as a base

I remember now that he’d taught me one very important thing: to begin again, at every turn if necessary, to stack all my exhausted ideas together and keep guessing, to transform the ecstasy of wakefulness into the quiet promise of dreams.

I had my first dream last night:

I dreamt that we stood opposite each other across the train tracks and he shone his beam over me and called me bigfoot.

I dreamt that lightning struck the rails repeatedly and balls of light raced the tracks between us. Little planets and constellations, all of them blue and electric, slowing, drifting slower, becoming less significant in the blackness of space. We became a tiny dot of life in a vast emptiness.

The burning sun was there. I stared straight into the sun until my eyes changed and the sun turned blue. The sun was a great beacon shining in all directions, burning out forever with all the sun’s great promise.

The blue sun shook with storms of becoming. I turned away:

I was in a parking lot and people were everywhere pushing carts. A great cacophony of tiny wheels bumped over rocks. Potholes were everywhere. A deep one gaped near me. A woman had fallen in and was crying to herself.

I climbed in with her. It was the woman from the diner. She was there for just a moment, then she became my uncle’s boar and screamed, trailing her guts on the gravel.

I beat my fists against my head, smacking the vision away, but could not wake into any but this dream: