Over the Meadow and Through the Woods

Desperate Times Prose: Volume IX

Over The Meadow and Through The Woods
a tale of dreams...

Part One

Reboot. The computer screen flickers, stark black and white shades of infinity. I must get some work done tonight. Altho, my increasingly labored typing tells me I'm tired, I must go on. My fingers get heavier with each keystroke. I begin to drift. Light fades and colors bloom out of reality. The solstice is here. My computer gives birth to a triple moon. Light beams shoot forth and I run for dear life. Fate chases me through rainbow colored space; milky smooth waves pass over and under me. The waves grow fearsome, the claw at my face, shrieking unpronounceable curses. I see the end. I see light. I see peace. I see pain behind me, clear skies up ahead. Eternity slows down, I live life one thirty-second of a second, one frame at a time.

Each passing second fills me with the desire to tumble off in to a puckish green meadow of sleep. I close my eyes and dream myself a field. Unfazed by my feckless exploits, I lay in a puckish green meadow in peace. A raven circles overhead. Even though I know he will do me no harm, I still wonder why he has come to this place. Ravens do not prey. They wait for the nearly dead to expire, that they might feast on carrion. The Ravens can smell death approaching like a sixth sense. Perhaps this Raven smells death on me. Perhaps he has come to warn me. Or perhaps he has simply come to say hello.

I feel alive. I feel awake in this dream, far more so than in the waking. I think the Raven has in all actuality, mistaken me for someone else. I look at him looking at me. I must remind him of something; a previous version of myself maybe. Perhaps I represent the personification of an idea, a unique point of view trapped inside something corporeal, waiting, always, waiting to be unleashed. The ground quakes. There is a tree? There is a tree apparently. The tree simply appeared, I could swear it was not here when I first entered the field. Unnerved, I pick myself up. My overalls are covered in white wash and I lead a red wagon full of misappropriated toys down the path ahead.

Part Two

Sky smiles down upon me as I walk, the way a father smiles upon his son. The wagon seemed to vanish and I am no longer wearing overalls. Clothed in the colors of the forest I walk along the country dirt road. A small yellow creature slightly resembling a Sunday comic strip character follows close behind. The path, once blooming with flowers of every color imaginable, has grown gray and listless. A tree shrub groans in pain. I hear his cries; weary from a long life of being shoved aside and stepped on. A butterfly zooms past me. Frogs of every shape, size and shade begin hopping toward me in perfect synchronization. All of a sudden I am in a packed theatre, surrounded by dreamers and philanthropists from all plains of existence. An usher with six legs, a violin and a rather vegetative complexion ushers me to my seat. A private box has been reserved in my name. I have the best seat in the forest theatre. The lights dim, the curtain lifts, the orchestra readies and before I know it, I’m witnessing an all amphibian musical production of the Lewis Carroll’s Through The Looking Glass. Despite of, or perhaps thanks to the rather fantastical source material, I am startled, scared and downright impressed at how efficiently the frogs’ used dance to progress the plot. The music and lyrics reminded me of Gilbert & Sullivan, Robert Johnson and Elliot Smith. The music soared and pounded and exploded throughout the theatre and through the forest. My spirit had been lifted. So moving were the frogs in their individual roles and as an ensemble, that they had me in tears by the finale. After the performance I had the honor of being invited backstage to meet the creative team.

I told the Frogs how much I appreciated their obvious uncanny understanding of American Musical as a relevant contemporary art form. I complimented them on an all around stellar production and before departing, asked the artistic director if the company would be adapting another classic for next season. The artistic director responded by taking me aside and telling me how they’ve been adapting source material in to musicals for millennia. The artistic director, a yellow tongued, brown spotted frog name Slitherdin said my comments warmed his cold blooded heart and the hearts of his fellow amphibians, but that the company wanted to move in another direction. Next season would feature the frogs production of Richard Wagner’s Die Walküre on ice. Privately I thought that seemed like a bit of a step backward. Publicly I wished Slitherdin and his friends good luck and told them I would do my best to attend next season.

Part Three
The theatre disappears. The forest path lies in front of me. The light fades, my confusion grows. I look to the smiling sky, but the sky smiles no longer. Troubled by a line in the frogs’ production I ask myself; am I dreaming? Or am I merely part of someone else's dream? Were the frogs a figment of my imagination? Am I a figment of theirs? Clouds block my sight and I know what’s happening. It’s happened before and it’s happening again; I know it, I can feel it in my ventricles. My vision is being obscured my melancholy horror.

Part Four
Melancholy Horror had always been completely unpredictable. She took on many forms. There are legends, stories really, of her birth to Celestial parents. Some say she was the daughter of a bastard wolf and an evil sorceress. Some say she lives in all of us, in the deep recesses of the negative heart soul, buried underneath grief; hidden between nightmare and despair. Truth be told, the origins of Melancholy Horror remain largely unknown and highly suspect.

There stands before me a man, cloaked in gray. He carries a giant book in his hand. With a nod of his head, he tells me to follow the path down through the forest to where the wild oak tree forks the road. At the oak tree I take the path on the right. The skies grow darker. Who knew what manner of creature inhabited the forest. I hadn’t exactly taken stock of the patronage at the theatre, but it seemed to me that if my usher had six legs, then there was no telling what Sprites, Jabberwoks, Vernicious K'nids or Flugglecarps lurked in this unknown forest.


I longed to be lying in the puckish green meadow with the Raven comfortably perched on the branch of our mutual friend the redwood tree.

(Next Time: Part Five)