“I am not asleep when I begin to dream…“
Please play this haunting piece by David Darling while you read
I am not asleep when this dream begins and I am alone in a part of my room I am only asked to go to if I have failed in some way. I am deprived of his voice and the two small crystal glasses are being held limply downwards by each one of my hands. In the right is the glass that held the sweet candy apple red liquor, not at all similar in taste or texture to the one I drank down timidly in The Red Dream. This is sweet, like a syrup, but in the left hand, the slight residue of bitter blue still clings, drying like a baked color onto the inside of the rim. The red is sweet… the blue is blue… it tastes acidic like a lemony sports drink and yet it makes me thirstier still when I drink it all. It hasn’t been ten minutes and because no voice coaxes or comforts, or directs me, I feel these ten minutes like 2 hours. The color starts to swirl across my face, first on the outside and when I close my eyes I still see a blackish screen that are my eyelids, but colors glow from outside making the black now blue, sometimes flashes of pink. I stand perfectly still and I choose to try and keep my eyes open, unlike the last two times, where I allowed them to close on their own, almost immediately or was actually blindfolded.
I stand perfectly still…
I feel my clothes breathing with my breaths and I angle my gaze downwards and see that they are not even the same clothes I had on when I first came into the room hearing the door locking behind me. The glasses, as always were standing on a small bedside table, and without a command I knew I was to drink both of them. I tried to do that evenly, a sip from the right, then a sip from the left until they both finished nearly together. So when I look down at myself, holding the glasses I am not really surprised, just awakened to the detail that now my clothes are also of mixed color, a candy-apple red baby doll shifting slightly over layers of powder blue lace. With each second it is getting harder and harder to see anything as the light is now taking over my entire vision, and my heart pumps rapidly. Just when I think “I must sit down or I will fall” I feel bands of colored light wrap tightly around my eyes and I am de-materializng, as I felt myself do on the Ship of White Dreams.
dematerializing in bands of colored light
I am going now, even from myself. There is the rush of air as if I were in high speed flight, I am that air speeding and there is a feeling I am a messenger, or a rescuer, something or someone needs me and I know I am on my way. I have no eyes nor limbs and I imagine this is what happens to the crew in science fiction movies when they teleport up and down to new worlds. I am first aware of patterns, colorful moving ones that start to focus ahead of me, above and below me and I am caught with the sensation of being gestated by light and now I am growing into it. Light, color,patterns, are always with me in my dreams.
I am in The Ink.
It is aqueous but not water, the colors shift forms and as quickly as they do, they shape into something else. It is frightening in that it has a beauty I have never seen before, so my mind can not even invent the words to describe it. Only now in retrospect and a long time after the effects of the sweet and sour journey, can I try to put these experiences into words. If you thought this moment was real -time, that I am really going through it now this second, you are wrong. When I have journeys as this one, there is no way to describe it while I am moving through it. His voice usually grounds me in language and that perhaps keeps my syntax functioning, and provides a word pantry, although raided and very bare still able to offer words. Today he does not speak to me and I am here alone.
Then suddenly I have form, shape, gender, thoughts and at first glance they seem to be what I am already familiar with, what I call me. I look up from The Ink to the skies, the moon is trapped in a net falling down beside me, my blue lace skirt is an impromptu parachute and I stretch out my arms instinctively to mute the fall. I am a streaking blue angel entering a new realities air space. All is possible.
the netted moon falls along side of me down into The Ink
The colors are so compellingly beautiful, heartbreakingly beautiful floating through my mind, that I feel a sting of tears and my eyes are washed in The Ink and I am so moved, I just pant shallowly, until this moment passes. Some things are too much for us to experience, we are not ready…and I know I am in one of these moments. Sweet and sour like the liquids I have just consumed, and I am overcome with waves of joy so deep they feel like sadness, and sadness so profound it makes me giddy with elation and admiration for the world I am being shown. In this state, I feel my feet touch solid ground, and when I peer out and around me, I seem to have landed on an object that is painted in the exact colors I too am now painted in, the sweet and sour colors of Life’s exotic mixed drink.
I am holding my breath like a statue full of wonder
I am holding my breath like a statue, full of wonder, curiosity, excitement, fear and surrender to what comes next. I have no idea where I am, and yet I sense the reason I am here is to help something survive, something that is dying close to me and I, without knowing what it is I possess, can save it/him/her/them, and wait only to be sure of what I must do next. The net that brought down the moon and pulled me to this spot, is now laying over a figure that has fallen into the emerald green part of The Ink. It almost looks like a giant insect, but the net does not allow me to see it with any clarity or detail. I jump down and pass right through the web-like stands of the blue mesh-work that grabbed hold of the moon and fell from the sky, perhaps dragging this creature down with it. I am bathed in orange light and I feel myself making slow ritual gestures, almost as if I were dancing.
“I am standing upon a downed craft or an insect…”
I am standing upon a downed craft, or an insect made out of polished steel, deep red, and the most pale haunting blue. It could be either and maybe it is both, but it struggles every once in a while to free itself from the restricting strands. This is why I am here and without willing them, my arms and legs begin to move in a slow graceful way. I think I am praying…praying that this net now be lifted. I am close to his head, and I hear very shallow labored breathing. This craft is alive.
I begin to rotate in an age-old rotation of hope
I begin to rotate in an age-old rotation of hope that what lives, even faintly, may keep on living. I feel the deepest compassion for this creature, my heart bleeds in its colors, his noble head chiseled like a fine- bred dog and I sense he is dying and his only chance for survival lies in me. In my thoughts I let all the words that want to come, spill out of my mouth and I lay over his stricken broken frame stroking and holding him, willing him back to life with my wishes, and my ritual dance.
I crouch on the side of his head and the net begins to dissolve
I crouch on the side of his head, and the net begins to dissolve. I see him for what he is, or rather what he could be. He is alive, there is no doubt, his labored breathing makes my body rise and fall, but he is made from a hard surface, maybe metal, or something I have never seen, something associated with inanimate transport not life -forms. He is a downed plane, a car wreck, a twisted pile-up heading for the compactor and then I look around and I see others, none of them even barely alive, they appear decapitated and tossed into a pile like junk, like something of no value.
So many thrown in a heap, all just like him
So many thrown in a heap, all just like him and I know I can’t save any of them, not even one. I am flooded with the deepest feelings of frustration and I am powerless, and this realization makes me cry out to his silence and scream at him, the one who left the glasses on my bed-stand, the one I trusted and believed in, who it appears has truly abandoned me.
Then why did you send me here?”
“Then why did you send me here? Why?
I can do nothing. I can save nothing. All are dying and all will die.
Why did I have to see this? Why?
Why did I have to see this? Why? All are dying and all will die.”
I slump to my knees sobbing, I am heartbroken, I have the broken heart of someone who cares and is helpless to change the outcome. I came too late it seems, and all that is left are my laments that gush out of me and fall over his prone head and into The Ink in the form of tears. I think I am crying for a tragedy that is beyond my human understanding, and yet it is not beyond my human feelings, and this makes me feel so much, that I too wish I could expire along with all of them.
Poetry pours from my lips and mixes with the teardrops
Poetry pours from my lips and mixes with the teardrops, because today of all days there is no voice who comes to tell me,
“Trust in it all”
or
“Don’t be afraid”
or
“Yes I have shown this to you for a reason,
but you might not understand it just yet”
I understand I do not only cry for these creatures whatever they were, but I cry because I am now alone and seeing so much is almost unbearable for me to live with every day, and his voice has abandoned me.
I lay across his snout and feel his last breaths
I lay across his snout and feel his last breaths, and I know his struggle will end soon, and he seems to know it too as he calms and no longer raises his head. I feel so much for him and I open my mouth and press it against him like a suction and I feel a liquid flow out of him, sweet not bitter and I suck some more and it slowly fills my mouth until I can’t hold any more. I drink of him, his fall, his pain, his lonely death and realize I did change something as he gives me willingly the essence he holds inside that he feels is precious. I understand him without words and the sweetness now of his last minutes fill my mouth and I hold him tight and tell him I will take this liquid back with me and to know I understand even though I understand nothing.
He stops breathing and is gone and I slip off his sleek muzzle
He stops breathing and is gone. There is nothing I can do but slip off his sleek muzzle and fall into The Ink where I let my body go limp and my tears turn to colors. I hold his essence in my mouth and now I want to desperately return, to wake up, to get back to my locked room. The sweet liquid of this dying creature is held carefully inside of me and with a sense of mission, I keep my lips sealed shut, so not a drop might spill and be lost.
I stand and will myself to return
I stand and will myself to return. I have no idea if I am still under the effects of the red and blue liquid, but I am submerged in The Ink feeling like I will explode soon if I can not spit out tenderly what he gave me in the generosity of his dying last wish. I push up in my mind, as if I am underground and I gasp through my nose with my mouth closed tight.When I open my eyes, I have returned and all in my room is how I left it. Bright colors completely replaced by the dark heavy shades of my paneled walls and I feel a security knowing all is there. I walk quickly to the bedside table and choose one of the empty glasses that had contained half of my journey. I am not particular which color, only that I need to deposit his essence into it as quickly as I can. Remembering it all, the scenes and sensations, his last sweet taste, I let it flow in the glass in one stream of colors swirling into and filling it up, way beyond what I could have possibly held in my mouth. I see before me what he gave me, what he was made of and realize in a second of clarity why he gave it to me.
His essence, what he bequeathed me, was the swirling shades and hues of The Ink.
Then the voice of the one who guides me, the voice of the one who had gone mute and left me on my own, whispers directly in my ear, his familiar breath against my cheek, his tone commanding yet loving. But I know what I have to do and I will do it…before I even hear him say it…
“Karima! Write it!”
“Write all of it!”
to be continued…
Karima Hoisan
April 16, 2011
Misty Shores Linc Island
*please see my comment
Digital Rabbit Hole 
Well this is my third in the prose series of Colored Dreams inspired by what I find on DB Bailey’s Sim Locus. He has opened my heart, mind and( mouth) to vivid colors and it has stained them all in the newest of ways, my writing has been influenced by living color in the deepest sense of that phrase. This latest one has totally surprised me too:)
Locus: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Locus/82/113/31
David Denton ( DB”s “Rl avatar”) has an amazing flickr stream of photos to make anyone dream. Can be found here:
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OMG Karima…..you keep surpassing yourself!! Wow….this was such a journey as to awaken ones own sensual senses just to be able to read it ( i read your words aloud, while listening to the music stream )…and to follow it, experience its gift…!! If i didn’t know better i would think you had some miraculous new drug i might have to try :)….but no, this is a naked open YOU and your Muse flowing thru you like a miracle….and i am continually astonished at the vivid and prolific stream of creative genius that is both your poetry and prose. Wow…..thank you!!
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Thank you so much jan and I know you know I haven’t found any new alternative hallucinatory drugs, or even use the old ones…:)This train of consciousness flows out sparked only by the colors and the rare beauty I have found on the Sim Locus. I too feel it is my deepest one of the series, and am hoping the muse will allow me to dream in a few more colors, before I close it…and write The End. Yes my Muse flows through me, and I can only hope she will stay for a long long time…I humbly admit I am not in control of that and am just surprised when she gives it her all and reveals things I didn’t even know I could imagine. Thank you for your beautiful and affirming comments dearest of friends…
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Miss Karima! This is a jaw-dropping, awe-inspiring piece of work. I wish I had the skills, the insight, and the capacity you have to view the world the way you do. Your word pantry (as you mentioned in this piece) is bottomless. As are the many other pantries in which you keep your writing skills. Jan says it well. “Prolific and vivid.” I will walk away from this pitiful comment shaking my head in astonishment and wonder. You ARE without parallel. Don’t ever stop creating!
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Hoyt, thank you for your beautiful comment. Sometimes the word pantry is bare, but lately(alhamdulillah) it has been stocked as if a natural disaster were heading my way(let’s hope not!)..We never know, and as easily as it might be overfilling, it could be so bare not even a shopping list could be written down, let alone a story. I want to thank you once again for your awesome expression (all yours..and you the originator) “heartbreakingly beautiful” the first time you ever said that to me I knew for sure we were tuned to the same frequency..smiles at you so warmly..Thank you for really knowing me, because you learned to know my poetry, my crazy poetic view of life..
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you are so amazing karima
the power to forge new realities from nothing
using ordinary words to create miraculous dreamscapes never imagined
such a deep and sacred beauty inside you to express such magic, pure and effortless. complete
so enriching
so womanly
so attractive
so alluring
…
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Snick:) thank you so very much for making this comment and for really allowing me to take you on that colored journey. Sometimes the magic comes, and if others feel it too, it is almost like a miracle of finding yourself in the same dream with a few close friends. impossibly rare, but what a nice thought.. always awesome for me when a reader connects so totally to something I have written..It becomes wonderfully personal then.. even if only for one story, a bond is made..
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As I’ve said before Karima, you’re probably the only person on earth who can put to words those hallucinogenic drug-induced experiences that even the greatest explorers and navigators of the sea of experimental drugs can only describe as “indescribable”.
If I didn’t know you better, I’d say “DMT, …yep definitely DMT.”
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Smiles at Menubar..well Buddy I will have to take your word for it, but if I was able to alter your consciousness for just a few minutes and make you feel you were flying on DMT, I will consider this as positive feedback. Thanks again for reading this one and your “very you” comment 🙂
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I got goosebumps reading this one sis, it is so visceral; I felt as though I was accompanying you through the inside of something deep and hidden – hard for me to explain as I don’t have your way with words *smiles*
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You said a lot by saying what you did..and I am glad I could take you on this odd journey, my muse took me on one night when I least expected it. Thanks Sis for going there with me..”visceral” yes that is a good word it was an emotional flight into color and feeling..
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Very powerful writing here, Kari, and the visual adds to it as well. The idea of living life unfiltered, at the mercy of a present, hiding, or altogether missing Muse is definitely a scary thing, but when it finally does show itself, you are ready to submerge into it. Well done!
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Wow Scottius, thank you for your comment and I do love your take on this piece. I am always the most surprised to see what it might mean, as I have had many thoughts on it after I write it but not while writing it. Yours is very interesting.. the voice itself is the Muse..Yes how frightening when it leaves..
Very insightful comment..has put me to think it again…thank you! I just saw an amazing quote in someone’s profile.It says it all for me and I add myself to his voice:
“I am a thread too slender
To suspend all this reality…”
~Phillip Pulfrey
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Pingback: The Deco Pink & Bronze Dream | Digital Rabbit Hole
Yes indeed a trip, of color, essences and of course sensuality. Your guide, a comforting male, who knows just what to do. He wants you to know you are never alone. You are always supported in every experience, how wonderful. I was also on the trip. Thank you for including me.
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Hello Jimmy * big smiles, I was so happy to read your comment. Yes this series started off as one color, one idea, but the truth..there are many colors and even many more color combinations, so I might be taking more of these trips, more than even I imagined. I hope you will join me..your Piscean feedback and life experiences makes you a wonderful co-traveler. So pleased to see you visited my blog and left this message:)
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The title itself induced a mouth watering reaction with promise of sweetness but of course it went so much farther.
I love that line “I am in The Ink” and for you it is such a life force to let it bleed onto paper/the screen. Such destiny !
The images are masterpieces to say the least.
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Thank you again Missy..Yes to be “in the ink” is an emotionally draining but mesmerizing place sometimes
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Pingback: The Colored Dreams Part 2 ~ Chapter 1 “Transition” | Digital Rabbit Hole
We are first born in a blinding flash of God-created primal force energy. A thought made real. An idea turned into physics of the Universe. Each one of us-our initial being brought into life by a thought. Each is unique. One at a time in void without time. But unique. Raw thought material to be thrown together, imbuded with flegling consciousness. We come into existence with perceptions as your colors are. Ingredients of human-ness. But lacking judgement and vision. We see with a developing understanding. colors are emotions and experiences without a meaning yet. Experiences. Life to life. These are choices suggested to have experiences which will create understanding of our developing soul. Forged life and life and life, each Earth experience offering a different view. We are encouraged by ones who come before to try every experience. Every role.
All ones need to know pain to understand pleasure. Loneliness to understand expansion with others. Male to have sameness and difference with females-to experience hurt and shame and tenderness and companionship. Females to understand how men can hurt them and pleasure them and feel them and abandon them. All the experiences of human-ness. Your colors are the energies of the Universe as painted by God. They root our feels with sense of the experiences. Red, new-hot-vibrant. The posibilities of the untried. You ones have painful experiences that create mind-colors reesmbling the human feelings. These are the real colors of the unseen by you ones but have their own reality based in pure energy as given by God. Blue is another shade of the human experience. So is green. This one captures the human feelings of excitement, dread, hope, pain, fears of all kinds your minds can create.
You were given these minds as gifts from God-to see, feel, experience all things possible from Earth and fellow ones. You will try all roles as you are guided to choose. You will move thru every color by your experiences. Some will hurt. Some will heal. As you move life to life…you ones add to your soul-bucket of understandings. This one captures the blur of moving thru human time, lives, experiences as swirls of these colors, vibrating as all things vibrate. As given by God. This one can see the time compression thru lives and describe it close to truth. You ones will all roll thru all colors at your own times of choice. Beyond Earth this is partially controlled by your choices, partially by ones wwho guide. Your emotions were tied to colors as vibration. You ones can sometimes remember past experiences which can color this life in a way you don’t grasp. But it is still there, guiding, pushing, threatening, coaxing, chiding you ones on. Your minds lock to color as a meaning. But you give it meaning. It is just an experience from our point of view. But colors allow remembering. Life to life. Be not afraid to collect these as shells in a bucket. All ones will grow, learn, and share with other ones. Eventually. This one is good with showing these emotions as experiences collected as the shells. The feelings are simply to make growth.
All ones will try all roles. short, tall, fat, skinny, male and female. All will be left-all will try leaving loved one or mate. All will feel sting and all will feel love and togetherness when done in balance. All ones will be all person ones-teachers, priests, thieves, ones of honor. As lives are lived, experience and understandings pile up. The sould grows and becomes full. All colors collect-red, green, blue, orange, violet, gold, and so one. Pinks is especially good for healing pain and loss. For the colors have their own energies-own vibrations. They are not only emotions-they are disntince eneergies. One can surround oneself in color to move or change something. To heal. To wallow in shame and self pity. To reward oneself. God gives all ones all colors to see, to feel, to imagine. To create new thoughts. To stimulate. When looking backwards thru eons of lifetimes and experiences, the colors will swirl and blur and shimmer. All capture human feelings of all kinds. they are supposed to. They remind us if something is off. Or when ones are on target. There is no badness here, only un-clarity. Ones can atune to colors to change as emotions point to direction needed. To stimulate, to prod. Be aware of colors around you. They are pointers, direction signs. This one reads them as signs and maps. They plot her way thru ideas and pain and pleasure. Words are powerful. As are colors. Words foretell realities. These can be created for good or ill. Do they cause pain, or joy? Use colors to mmake change as you make words create reality and shape your own futures. These things are in your hands. Watch the signposts, use your compass and colors to guide you. You ones make your own needles point the way to your own futures. Each is unique. But human-ness will eventually give way to mastery and your own creations. As told before, you ones will all guide your own boat eventually. Learn to understand all colors. They are your signposts. They are the paints God uses to shape and charge all living things. This one’s voyage thru colors is the soul’s journey thru lives. All will make ones all colors-pure blinding white. You ones will need all colors to make white.
This one honors this process. She understands colors paint both feelings and create realities. Both seen and unseen.
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Tube. Wow!! What an incredible treatise on color and the role it plays in our lives, our world. If my stories, my small tale, has inspired you in this way, all I can say is thank you for your amazing, comment, support, inspiration, encouragement, and mystical friendship. Your point of view, your voice, your words,are other-wordly, seen from a vantage point few of us are brave enough to look from. Words have power..and yours resound. Thank you.
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I love the artwork!
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Hello Dawn..my new friend on an old page…Thank you for saying that..These are my virtual photographs I took on this amazing world built my architect friend, David Denton//He made me DREAM in colors..
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Well, it worked! The colors are fabulous!
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