Hypnagogia:
“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
Edgar Allan Poe
That feeling that occurs in-between your waking consciousness and dreaming, where symbolism is the only currency. It is something that both the mystic and the hobo experience, in its multitude.
I dreamed I saw a lake on fire, a little too on the nose for me, so I pleaded for purgatory instead. Only to wake up in chains, tightly bound, both prisoner, and warden.
Human beings are as perplexing as they are brittle, walking contradictions, no matter how thin my hair gets, or the aches and pains of time, I seem bound to the same fate. Looking for some alternative, anything is better than ceaseless drifting, wandering in circles, far from Ozymandias hubris, more like Odorous, gluttoning myself on my own tail.
I dream of a vast desert, a twin incarnation of the Mojave, I chase after it. The geodes, windy mountain passes, offering a glimmer of shade. I have been to this place, and long for it. In its unforgiving hidenness. Heraclitus was right “nature loves to hide.”
I woke up, sprinkled some water on my face and met the day. Waiting for the embers to fizzle out, allowing me to masquerade as the infinite identities I answer to. Wondering when I will be able to return, to this desolate wasteland.
The putrid air of the profane, is enough to churn the strongest stomach, I ask for a sprinkle of redemption a baptismal rain. Instead it burns my skin, acidic, covered in ashes. A foreshadowing of what we all return to. Except the furnace must not be found in purgatory but in the dream western sun of the Mojave.
Cowboys ride into the sunset knowing, this is a journey we must all go alone. Only after we put aside our wandering, past, and humanly attachments. Until then I can only wait for the next dreaming expedition.