As a Child in the Woods

I had a dream lastnight, a beautiful nightmare. I was a child in the woods with all the wonder and mystery they hold. Esoteric powers, ineffable and faceless forces, terror, awe, and sublime violence all seem to lurk invisible in the woods, when you’re a child. The dream contained images I intuitively recognized, whether landscapes or dreamscapes, they seemed so familiar, it was taken for granted that I had known them long ago. Upon waking a forgot them, only the feeling of familiarity and fear remained, the fear of the unknown and the elemental. I always expected for some supernatural or monstrous being to come barreling out from behind a tree or from the shallow depths of a creek, in the woods, it seemed all too peaceful and silent, in the woods.

Upon awaking, I felt most deeply the contrast between my consciousness as a child and as an adult. Now, the mysteries that transfix my thoughts are private parties, power play, virtual financial coups, and orgies in unassuming buildings in manhattan and all the pairs of eyes that, I imagine, are watching the subway trains go by from the darkness inside the tunnels. I wake up and think about money and clients and the office. Not the windigo or the ghost of the weeping mother by crybaby bridge or the blood sacrifices of satanic rites- the kinds of things that a child imagines to exist in the woods, just as soon as you turn your back. It’s too bad really.