14 comments

  1. Gabriel Bloomer

    This was a regularly occurring dream until I was eight.

    There is no escape. They are hungry and the ground WILL swallow me. No matter how fast I run I WILL fall. Without hope I plummet into a never-ending hole. I pray it doesn’t end because there would be an abrupt and painful stop at the bottom.
    Windows line the walls. Some are dark. Others are eerily lit and ghoulish grey witches and zombies reach frail looking scabby hands out to catch me. I’d rather fall all night, but sometimes they succeed and drag me through one window or another. Always a different dream, a different adventure, a different nightmare awaits behind each and every opening.
    In one I rescue a princess. In another I am too late and she is already dead. One holds implements of pain and torment and another a flowering meadow in spring. I’d rather that than risk the nastier portals, but every night I am caught and the roulette wheel turns again.
    I grow weary of the routines two to three times a week for years. I want it to end and there is only one way to make it stop. To end it all and die at the bottom of the abyss. I splash lightly into a pool of clear, sweet water, full of colorful fish and plant life. I awake, never to experience the dream again…..

    1. mcullen Post author

      Wow, powerful writing. The strong images of “windows line the walls” and “Others are eerily lit and ghoulish grey witches and zombies reach frail looking scabby hands out to catch me” stick with me and are definitely nightmare producing. Good thing I’m reading this in the morning! I enjoy hearing what happens behind the windows. . rescuing a princess (even though narrator is sometimes too late to save her). I appreciate the “bad” being bookmarked with the “good” . . . rescuing, implements of pain and the flowering meadow. Have the “good” mixed in with the “bad” gives the reader a chance to catch his/her breath. The intrigue of it all makes me want to continue reading to find out what happens. Well-written. A good read.

      1. mcullen Post author

        Lovely, gorgeous writing that soars! Good visual elements = helium balloon and “a longing that echoes through me with hollow sadness – the way you feel after you’ve laughed your head off, until there is no more laughter inside. Or when you’ve cried for so long that there are no tears left – just a peaceful melancholy.” Beautiful! Thanks for posting.

    2. Ke11y

      Such a dream I can do without! I’ve heard, but have no proof, that the falling – flying dream is one of the most common, which is strange to me, because as someone whose professional life was actually flying, I never once had such a dream. Now, having read this little piece of what to me feels like a nightmare, I’m thankful. I loved these words…I’d rather fall at night…as if the feeling of falling through the dark might actually be a serene sensation. Anyway, this is one relieved reader who thanks the dream-maker that you were eventually freed from this experience. I’m all in for pools of clear, sweet water, colorful fish, and plants for a good nights sleep. Thanks for sharing.

    3. wrdpntr

      Gabriel, I loved hearing you read this and it is even better to read it a second time. A terrific dream, wonderfully described.

  2. heartmom

    It’s been too long since I had my favorite dream. It takes place in many different settings, but the point of the dream is always the same, and it makes my heart sing.

    I can fly. Levitate, aviate, matriculate – call it what you want.I don’t flap my arms like wings, or flutter my legs like a butterfly – I just hold my breath and leave the ground. Like a helium balloon. My body just rises and floats through space as if it is the most natural thing in the world.
    I am the only one who can fly in my dreams. Others don’t seem to notice, or care. I don’t frighten or baffle them – they continue on like I’m not even there, hovering above them, wafting on an invisible breeze.

    My tummy tickles when I fly – the way it can “drop” when you ride a swing, or “twitter” when you’re falling in love. It’s a crystal bubble feeling – unusual but welcome, like an old friend who you bump into on the street.
    I’ve always felt like I know how to fly, even in my waking hours. The knowing is like a forgotten word on the tip of your tongue, tantalizingly just beyond your reach. Some part of me knows that I used to fly; that I have conquered gravity and put it behind me. Maybe I was an angel, or some kind of bird who flew like a breath, or a beating heart – an involuntary motion, as natural as a sigh or a smile.

    I love my flying dreams, although I usually wake up with a longing that echoes through me with hollow sadness – the way you feel after you’ve laughed your head off, until there is no more laughter inside. Or when you’ve cried for so long that there are no tears left – just a peaceful melancholy.
    I miss flying. Maybe in my next lifetime I will sail through the air – like I used to.

  3. Ke11y

    My tummy tickles when I fly – the way it can “drop” when you ride a swing, or “twitter” when you’re falling in love. It’s a crystal bubble feeling – unusual but welcome, like an old friend who you bump into on the street.

    I’ve always felt like I know how to fly, even in my waking hours. The knowing is like a forgotten word on the tip of your tongue, tantalizingly just beyond your reach. Some part of me knows that I used to fly; that I have conquered gravity and put it behind me. Maybe I was an angel, or some kind of bird who flew like a breath, or a beating heart – an involuntary motion, as natural as a sigh or a smile.

    You be careful…you’ll send an old man to his grave very happy! Thank you for your writing this…I have become enriched by your poetic chatter and, shamelessly, by your compliments. I read your words as though they were indeed letters, so personal, intimate, and at the end I feel tearful, honored, worried…in fact so many different feelings.

    You are a deeply sensitive writer in your own right, incredibly fearful, which, I think, is why you write. I know it’s why I write. Every day you must see the images you write about…so easy, so simple, and I, the reader, come across them as if I might find these words hidden in a very old book, in some ancient library, with pages stained, and years of broken biscuit crumbs among the dreams…fairy tales…silly old songs…a tapestry of life that is yours…just yours…flying across the pages…passing the quiet world when Autumn shouts at your eyes, all those colors turning…yellow yells discovery…blue whispers inside your head…silences are turned gold, (that’s what my mother told me so it must be true … silence is golden,) and you…you are the translator, when clouds become soft to your touch, and Rome shines up at you, London weeps, and the angels of the North Pole join hands with you. Such a flight…such a flight…I had to join you!

    1. mcullen Post author

      Wow, Heartmom and Kelly. . . looks like you inspire one another. Way to go!

  4. Ke11y

    I thought once I’d got it out of me…you know…mastered it in some way, given it musical justice, so that it wouldn’t haunt me the way it does. Haunt is a strange word for something that comes to a mind, filling it with such incredible beauty. Yet no other word truly represents the circumstance in which I’m continually visited and revisited by the vision of this dream. I always wake up tearful, sobbing sometimes, not tears of distress you understand, but joy; the sheer joy of finally understanding something that perhaps lies beyond this world. I say perhaps because ultimately I’m a writer, but before that I’m a human being, a mortal soul as different and as complex as the next. Sure it’s a dream, how could anything so splendid, so huge, so enthralling, and so unbelievable be anything else?

    I was a young man the first time the dream enraptured me. I didn’t understand it; the strange, haunting, beautiful sound, watching a boy carrying a torch as he entered into the valley, this galactic, sumptuous cavity buried between the hills of my life. Thunder rolled its weight from every corner of the sky, not a menacing sound, more a heralding. But the boy, such a boy, his complexion could have been that of every skin color, his hair wild, and his face…well, his face, yes, but that’s for later. I see him enter the valley from my lookout high on a hill. I do not know why I’m here, or why I feel so infernally alone. I’m merely a spectator to what is coming…battalions, legions of men, women and children following the boy holding the torch, carrying bright banners, streams of silk flowing like rivers into the valley. Their faces full of joy, dancing to the endless thunder of feet rolling in and peeling across the valley floor.

    I sit on the hillside for days…days I tell you, blissfully deranged, listening to the thunder and the beat of the drums, watching the millions pass by. It’s like, well it’s like each of their faces is known to me, of my kind, my nation, my life actually born of their dancing, following the child with the torch. Darkness comes and goes, hunger is satisfied without eating, sleep …I don’t know…I just don’t know. From deep within the thunder of the valley’s flowers, reverberating upward through wind shaken willows, the drums sounding from the outriders on their horses, a feast made of music, every taste exciting, a constant breeze of pure sound that I could not turn away from, nor wanted to. I had this urge to join in. Who is the boy with the torch? Why do legions follow him? Is it because of the light in his face, this constant peace that emanates from his being, his youthfulness? Where is he going…from where? There seems no reason or rhyme, just endless nations of people, joining hands as if they’d never known borders, war, or religion. Or they’d know every bit of it. I cannot say what whirling feeling possessed me standing there on the hillside, just that when the last perfection disappeared from the far end of the valley I was left wanting, hungry, waiting for something. The thunder of humanity rumbled into the distance, and the music in the breeze quieted. I knew the serenity of it all was leaving me, standing there alone, a troubled boy seeing something of the way it all should be. The whole of human kind, marching, maybe, to what lies beyond, and I was less fearful, caught up in the whirling celestial tide of human kind.

    Finally, overtaken with silence, the music spiraling out toward another place I saw on the far hill the torch, still in the hand of the boy, and held high. That boy was me. I was him.

    I lay down and slept soundly amid the peace of knowing what lies beyond.

    1. mcullen Post author

      Whoa! And Phew! and Wow! Amazing writing. Breathtaking. Lovely. A pleasure to read and experience. Thank you for posting.

    2. heartmom

      Ke11y – so much majesty, flooding every sense – the color, the pageantry, the cacophony, it’s all encompassing, and yet, you are removed from it ( and you remove your reader) allowing us to soak it all in without being overwhelmed: to observe as you observe high atop some unnamed hill. Your next to last paragraph, ” Finally overtaken with silence” allows us to catch our breath and put a name to the parade of life that has passed us by … I’ll dream this dream tonight, and try to put a name to it tomorrow. Thank you for the inspirations <3

  5. Kathy Myers

    I am a year younger than my father was when he died. He never changes in my favorite dream. It’s the bestess one ever. You know the one right? The one where he sits and talks to me, and he laughs and talks some more about this and that like it was just another day. And other people talk to him too, like it was nothin’ special. But I know the secret. He died. He shouldn’t be here, but here he is. No sense ruining it for Daddy and everyone else by sayin’ so out loud. I can keep a secret—yes I can. I’ll never tell. No way— you can’t make me. Pinky swear; cross my heart and hope to die.

    1. mcullen Post author

      Oh,Kathy, exquisite writing. Thanks for posting.

    2. heartmom

      Kathy -what a concise, sweet glimpse into the amazing love you have for your Dad. My mom always LOVES the dreams she has of her grandmother – she says it is like a visit from the person she loved the most. She wakes refreshed and rosy, because in her dreams, she sits and talks with her Grammy. It is real, and it is heartfelt, and it makes anybody who reads it, smile and nod our heads.

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