Chapter 153: Dreams and Visions (or Down the Rabbit Hole)

When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen’s off with her head
Remember what the Dormouse said
Feed your head - Grace Slick, 1967

So I sat in the reluctant rocker and let the combined effect of heat, beer and food overtake me; it was a blissful if only temporary exit from reality. But the heat dreams that came were strange and confusing yet somehow didn’t seem quite like dreams; unlike most dreams this has never faded from my mind. Strange days indeed.

Usually dreams are relatable to something in your present or past, you can find the tiny ties if you remember those dreams long enough. This one was completely unconnected, it was ‘unworldly’ to say the very least.

I found myself in a haze that slowly cleared to reveal an enormous but unfinished tapestry. That tapestry itself was everywhere and everything, even odder is that it seemed to be everywhen. Bizarrely I was also part of that tapestry, my mind still shudders when I try contemplate the everything which that tapestry was.

The problem was that tapestry was and wasn’t, there was also an endless curtain of strings which came from every direction; directions I couldn’t grasp. I reached out and touched a bit of string and suddenly my mind was full of someone’s perception and feelings, none of which was within my realm of understanding. I simply stood, as if in shell shock, riveted in another’s unfathomable existence; not lost in wonder but lost in confusion. My mind rebelled as I attempted to understand and I became nauseous.

I felt a burning hot/cold grip on my arm as I was pulled free of the thread. The hand that gripped my wrist was many things at the same time; I was in awe, frightened and even angered at this saving hand. The worst came when the face defied recognition, it wouldn’t stay. It was but wasn’t a face that I could understand. The words though, those words saved me.

As I was held tight with a delicate claw like grip her hands wove the threads of the emerging tapestry. None if it made sense or was fathomable. If one hand held me how could her hands yet still both weave? How was this a she, but I knew it was. But she spoke in a willowy, soft and frightening voice.

Her manner of speaking was concise and staccato.

“I am of the Weavers.” Well that didn’t tell me much.

“We weave the threads of lives into the fabric.” Ok, that seemed to fit.

“Threads may cross or change direction in the fabric but cannot go back on themselves.” Ok, I get weaving.

She raised my hand and pointed – odd though, she kept weaving.

In the distance I saw a mad character dancing on an edge of the river of threads. How can you be on the shore of a river which flows from every direction? The madman leapt into the stream and grabbed a single thread, he shuddered for just a moment and then threw the thread back up against the stream.