Another world

Last night I dreamt that I was walking through my old school again. It was larger and cleaner than it had ever been. I walked through the old cycle shed behind the classrooms where we used to pile up our bikes, slanted against the wall, falling one on top of another until you couldn’t tell spinning handlebar from wheel. So I walked through the cycle shed and discovered that everything had changed. There were no cycles anymore, no dirty walls to prop them on – it was a wide field with grass high enough to skim my knees, and when I looked further, I could see a swing on which a kangaroo was swinging. His spindly legs were on the slat, well above my head, and his head was towering up in the air, bobbing side to side as the swing went up and down.

I walked past him, with my head pulled down towards the grass, gravity or fear, I could not be certain. Soon the knee high grass gave way to even taller structures that rose to my shoulder as I walked on into the African grasslands, no tear in the fabric of time, as it flowed past me. Where did this world end, and the new one begin? No line was visible, no mark of plough, no stamp of muddy feet, no trail in the sky above, no flowing water as guide. Time was indeterminate, standing still on a landscape of dry grass yellow and somber sky blue stretching to the horizon, which is the end of time.

I found a glimpse of moving ochre, a conjunction of power and audacity, a lioness, pacing the distance slowly. I was no one anymore, struggling to obliterate myself, hoping to disappear from that evil eye so powerful. I waited silently for morning, although I knew there would be no rescue. Sometimes, things are true even when they don’t seem to be.