i woke up.
i periodically have this dream. it's come to me since my early 20s, when, in the most vivid dream of my life, i dreamt i was driving a mountain pass. it was night, or at least, it was that night-like season that seems to cover all my dreams. i wasn't alone. there was a passenger beside me. i looked over and it was a void, its face a black oval.
we hit a guard rail, went over. fell into a torrential river below.
when i woke up, i didn't wake up, finding myself instead somewhere in an infinite field, a huge tree in the distance. i walked over and found a few of my closest friends. they had laid out a blanket. we sat and talked.
i woke up.
the second part of the dream was intensely vivid and i remember the yellows and greens and blues as much as the darkness of what came before. why the inversion? what was the passenger next to me? why do i still remember it in detail two decades later?
some people dream almost every night, but i don't, only occasionally at best, although the dreams often linger. the ones where the dead step forward from the past to visit me, but never talk; the ones where i'm to die myself, but never do. as an atheist i want to dismiss all this as the brain's little tremors, but i can't, not always, and it's easy to see why throughout history people have ascribed such oracular weight to what comes when we're most vulnerable. i woke up, deeply unsettled, tried to shake it. i couldn't shake it, sat down, and wrote all this.