Wednesday, March 18, 2009

You can only write about dreams in Braille.

After a long walk in the heat of the city I walk into a shaded park to find a spot in the shade. I sit in the lush, thick, greener than green grass and feel the cool breeze sway the white hairs on the back of my neck. The sensation lifts the goose bumps out of my skin and a shaking relief goes shimmering down my spine like wet sand. Running my index finger across my arm, I try and read my goose bumps like Braille. All I can understand is that it says something beautiful, but not quite logical or useful to me, something about the relationship between the grass, the trees and the sky. I cannot usually read Braille, but I can sense that these bumps include the words: beauty, soft, air, wings, fur, gentle, and maybe even love. These words sit in my head side by side and when I tilt my head back and inhale, the air rushes in and blends and shakes them all together; creating another eruption which sets off another spinal Mexican wave of trembling vertebrae. From my spine the relief-quake follows into my nerve branches and releases firmer goose bumps on my skin. These bumps are clearer and more defined and I am able to understand more of the Braille. It tells me why the birds are singing in the trees and why the flowers look so comfortable swaying in the wind and why the air feels so satisfying rushing into my lungs and why i can use this air to blow a feather away.
As the sensation wears off, the goose bumps soften then disappear and the answers fade. I fall back into the grass. Sometime passes whilst I stare into the sky and as my eyes close to sleep, I picture the earth as an ants nest in some dark woods. As I get closer to sleep I imagine a young boy, in overalls and no t-shirt, one day finding the nest and jabbing a stick into it.