Red Hurts

(Dream) After racing around, my friends and I drive up a narrow, a too narrow, mountain trail, with an incredibly far drop into the gorge below, I realize, gripping some sort of texture on the cliffside. Here we wait; I'm number three or something. While we're waiting, I find myself in a fancy ballroom, having taken one of the last prime seats not far from a stage, and over to the side. Suddenly, as everyone else tries to settle into what are left of the seats, I playfully poke a long stick into the hand of a gigantic black woman, and having gotten her attention, draw her over to my plush leather footstool, essentially using my own body to hold a place for her. She understands my offer, and as she draws closer, we begin to switch places, although it's really impossible: She's way too big for the footstool, which begins to collapse. Looking back to where I have been waiting on the side of a cliff, I realize the drop-off is far less than I thought. It's only about four feet to the floor, instead of four-tenths of a mile to the bottom of a gorge. Then suddenly I realize my time to speak is almost upon us, and I forgot to prepare a word of it! I begin moving to the stage, and as I approach the center-stage rostrum, a voice in my mind says, (just as I'm waking up,) "Two destinations."


Trends and Everyday Events in

the Early Twenty-First Century

|

Richard Ames Hart

Wednesday 6 August 2003