Halloween Dreams
As should suprise none of you, Halloween is my favorite holiday. Yeah, I think it even tops Christmas, though there is a lot to be said for good will and good cheer and winter warmth. (Speaking of which, it got into the 30's here last night, and was very windy. Since my car has developed a short circuit in the lighting department, which keeps blowing all my fuses, so I can no longer drive it at night, I got to have a fun, 7 full miles walk last night, from about 7 to 7:30-ish, carrying groceries into the face of the wind; they were light groceries, but if you're not in shape for it that gets tiring. Also, the bottom of my shoes are getting worn out) Anyway . ..

The last book I finish before Halloween (barring either grave catastrophe or an impossible lightning read of some other book) is going to be Caitlin Kiernan's The Red Tree. I'm about 100 pages from the finish ,but let me say right now, this thus far an *awesome* book, and perfect for this time of year. It's going to rank with "Low Red Moon" and "Silk" as my favorites of hers, I think, tho these are all very different books (with a lot in common, at the same time). One of the interesting things about this is just how much I have in common w/the protagonist; I grew up in a small town 40 miles or so from the Birmingham, AL city limits, and this character grew up in a small town about 15-20 miles away. And referenced "Mayberry" from the Andy Griffith Show, and one of the main supporting characters, Goober Lindsay, is from my small town. Also, the narrator focuses on dreams and a tendency to digress in her writing a lot, and in case none of you have noticed, I every now and then have a tendency to digress. Wandering are my thoughts.

And, two days ago (I was occupied yesterday, so didn't get around to writing this until now), there was a dream sequence that was so reminiscent of a dream I had around New Year's way back one year in college. I worked it into the novel I was then writing, and I would just copy that more immediate transcript into here but, hey, lost the manuscript. Still, it seems appropriate for this time of year. So, a bit over 20 years later, told very baldly and without much attention to detail because I'm sleepy and my shoulders ache and I want to go back to bed, here is my then-dream:

I was having some sort of other dream, I don't remember what, when I suddenly walked out of it. I mean, literally, I was dreaming, and I saw this cloud of mist or fog, with a hole in it, and on the other side of the whole were beautiful rolling green hills, sort of glowing with a vibrant golden cast. And I walked along the hills a bit with more mist on each side but blue sky and sun above, and I realized I had been dreaming before and was not physically awake now, but felt this was somehow a different sort of dream, more real. (this was before I had ever tried or even knew what lucid dreaming was, though it did spur a great deal of research into dreams and lucid dreaming in particular; I got quite good at that while living alone in LA a couple of years later, was doing it almost every night for a bit, but it's one of those things you have to --or at least I have to--consciously practice to be able to do)(plus, in general or in their entirety, I did not find deliberately sought after lucid dreams to be more real, or meaningful,in any sense, or if I did I've forgotten it now). And at some point there was no long mist on any side, or sunlight overhead, or a sense of being in a dream at all. I was walking in a broad path, or more like a giant stretch long rectangular field, much too wide to be a road, with large trees on all sides with a giant cliff a hundred or a couple of hundred yards off on one side of the trees (I'm not great at estimating distance, especially from that long ago and someplace I never saw again), and everything was basically normal except there was a really strong sense of the *aliveness* of everything. Grass, trees, rocks, etc. Which I know a lot of these re always alive, but, seemed moreso here. From being more real than a normal dream, this was more like more real than everyday reality; everything was vibrant and stirring like when the wind's picking up right before a storm. And over head the sky was a mass of rolling glowing grey clouds, lit up by interior lightning, sort of. And everything just had this sense of importance. And I felt especially alive and just walking there was kinda fun.

And then I saw this *huge* old stone church, with moss growing on a lot of the stones (and they were huge stones)(giant block wallks, but with an attic still of giant stone blocks, shaped more like the top of a house than the flatness you'd except from a temple, and I haven't been to a church or been back home in so long I don't even remember what sort of roofs they normally have, there, seriously, but I remember this) in a clearing cut amidst the trees. And there was a cloaked and cowled figure standing in front of it beckoning me closer. I think I may have been vaguely scared or nervous, I must have been, but I can't remember now, just the sense of extra aliveness and importance. The church was the most alive and vibrant thing there, except maybe the sky. There was no face, just darkness, under the cowl when I got closer, and it pointed towards an open door, double doors like a lot of churches except big like a cathedral door, at ground level, and I looked in and there were candles and darkness and a a constant chanting that I couldn't understand and a lot of shadowy figures moving in there, and I was absolutely certain that if I went in *that* way, they would kill me. I remember the dilemna, I felt I had to go in, but I knew for 100% certainty that I was going to be stabbed to death with long curved knives with golden handles that all of the shadowy figures were carrying, even though I couldn't actually see any knives.

And suddenly I started floating upward, towards the window in the middle of the top floor or attic or whatever and I thought "yeah, maybe go in this way" then I floated through the window and there was suddenly nothing but a whole universe of nothing but crushing darkness extending infintiely in all directions; no windows out or light or anything (so don't ask me how I knew the darkness extended infinitely in all directions; I just did, or at least thought I did). I mean *literally* crushing, it's like my spirit was floating there and was a coherent whole and it was being literally crushed. And I fough the darkness as hard as I could, desperately fighting not to just get compacted out of existence, but this massive, massive weight crushing in equally from all sides until I was an ever shrinking sphere and I fought desperately but hopelessly and I was really able to think of nothing else but trying to survive and then suddenly this glowing white light filled me up and I was a sphere of glowing white light and I was still being crushed but I had an interneal pressure to counter the external and I lashed out at the darkness with the light (Yeah, yeah, I get the Genesis imagery here, sorta) and then I was being filled up with more light than I could stand and I thought *that* was going to destroy me even as it was saving my ass, and giant lashes of burning white light swept into the darkness and the light was burning and destroying the darkness and the darkness recoiled and I remember thinking it seemed hurt and I actually felt sorry for the darkness and wondered if I should stop what was happening but didn't know how and I was also thinking I was going to be destroyed, just seared out of existence instead of crushed, and at some point there was no darkness anymore, just pure white light, and then I woke up.

I woke up relieved at being alive and exhausted. Then went back to sleep and slept normally, but I was groggy as hell all the next day. I was home for Christmas break, I can't remember if it was New Year's or not but it was around there, and Mom got really mad at me for staying in bed all day and acting out of it when I was awake, but so exhausted and groggy. I started feeling better that night and was fully recovered the next day.

Very strange.

ps- thanks to BrigidsBlest for doing a "31 favorite Halloween movies" list, as it reminded me of two of my all time favorites, "The Masque of Red Death" and "Near Dark" both definitely belonging in my all time top ten, I think. The latter is a good movie for sensuality and romance,too, a very great sad and beautiful date movie, if anyone's looking for such a horror movie and hasn't seen it.,