Though older, and sometimes clunky, my body still functions the way I want it to, mostly. The stump in the ground is coming out slowly, like a tooth being pulled, yet the main roots have been cut, and now, excavation begins. This is a siege, not a rapid assault, and days will pass, perhaps many of them, before the stump is headed to the compost pile. Then there are three more.

            Heat is settling in, like a watchful demon, whose breath is humidity, and whose purpose is spite. Sweat pours out of a body like blood from an open wound, and the mosquitoes, the imps of the Demon Heat, come to accept unwilling donations.

            Yet I have no intention of using brute force, for levers and strategic pries of wedges will do more good than trying to butt heads with the stump. This is a process, as most things that involve humans will be.

            The sun comes rushing around again, another week is born from the ashes of a weekend, and the stump awaits. What will I learn from it, today, I wonder?

            Good Morning. Let’s go.

The dream began in a forest, tall evergreens, the wind in their crowns sounding like a waterfall, white clouds racing overhead, the blue sky visible in patches not covered by dark green or vivid white. The trees parted to a meadow, with the wind rushing over the ground now, pushing the heather to and fro, forcing bees and butterflies away from their tasks.

            A large gap in the meadow appeared, it hadn’t been there a second ago, like a dry lake. The bottom was white sand, fallen logs rested here and there, and I wondered what this was, and how it came to be. I stepped into the depression and felt an odd sensation and realized the lake was filled, but the water was invisible. Not clear, or pristine looking, no, it was there but not. The sensation of wetness was not cool, or warm, but simply wet, like light sweat unnoticed on your skin. I stepped forward, not feeling anything, yet with a vague feeling of pressure. I cupped my hand, dipped it into where I thought the surface might be, and felt something, a sensation of nothingness, as if I could feel the air in my hand. There was no taste as I put my lips to the liquid, and in my mouth, it felt as if something was there, like the tiniest weight. I swallowed and felt less than nothing.

            I stepped forward, and fell.

            The liquid was thinner than water, lighter than air, so I didn’t float. Nothing filled my lungs. It wasn’t like drowning but more like trying to breathe thin air, yet the sensation was of liquid, too. I flailed, didn’t swim, then turned and walked out of the deep nothingness.

            I could breathe. Air filled my lungs again, and when I coughed hard, something but nothing came out. The sky was still perfectly blue, the clouds were brilliant white, and the wind felt cool against my skin. I felt the liquid leave the surface of my skin as if it were all a connected, single organism returning to its home.

The dream was one of fear and anxiety. I know the road we were using as an escape route but can’t place it yet. Behind us, things. Monsters? Madmen? Zombies? No, not zombies, but something pursues us.

Go into the woods, some in our small party suggested.

No, distance is the key, move fast and far. Perhaps find help. If we hide they can surround is, cut off escape.

You’re not in charge.

Do what you want.

The party gets smaller as a half dozen or so people flee into the woods.

We push hard, walking fast, the road open and clear, straight as a drawn line in front of us. Behind us nothing, nothing to be seen. But I want a curve to hide us. One of the party is man who starts limping. He’s young, strong, but stepped between two rocks and broke his ankle a month ago. Panting, he looks behind us. Nothing. Ahead of us, nothing. He decides to hit the woods. We lose another.

At a bridge a dying stream staggers though weeds and broken concrete under the bridge, and disappears into the trees. We rest, eat snacks, drink bottled water, and take stock. We have little. By the time the sun disappears and darkness hunts us, we will have nothing.

We hear a scream.  We all bolt as one now, people tossing away what little they were carrying. The slowest runner has been given a death sentence, cries for help, but no one stops. I look back. The bridge seems impossibly close for us to have run so fast. The woman who gave out first is looking back, too. She turns and looks at me.

Thanks for coming back, she says, and she crying. We’re dead. Be both know it.

We’ll go into the woods, follow the creek, and hope they go after the group.

Okay.

The bramble slows us too much. It’s too thick. The woman is exhausted.

“Leave me, I can’t keep up.”

“It’s too late.”

We can see the road, see things passing quickly. None of them stop to look for us.

We hear screams. Then nothing. We sit in terror, neither of us speaking. The woman cries softly.

Darkness comes, and it is complete. Sounds of something crashing through the woods. The woman bolts, screams.

I wake up.

Right now, as I write, I miss her, and I hope she made it.

Gee, Mike, write this out, and save her!

It doesn’t work like that. I write what is, not what I want to be.

That doesn’t make sense, Mike.

Try from inside here.

A while back I had a dream of being an aquatic creature, or at least semiaquatic. The world was one of low light, overcast skies of gray and the liquid of the world was black, but translucent. The beings of the world would swim out to pay homage to a creature who simply floated in the water, and whose very presence radiated malice and harm.

I tried to swim under this creature, and my thought was if I started out long before I got close, it would not notice me. However, as I drew near, it pushed me deeper into the water with some force that was as irresistible as it was slow.

My species could not breathe underwater, yet we had a great capacity, so drowning wasn’t going to be what killed me. As the depth increased so did the pressure. I felt my brain being compressed, my skull being slowly squeezed to the point of structural failure, and dying this way would be infinitely worse. I surrendered completely, stopped fighting, and began to experience the end of my existence.

The thing released me. I drifted up slow, feeling my body from within, trying to access any damage, trying to tamp down the fear it might toy with me, pushing me down, allowing my rise, tormenting me, as it was wont to do.

I rose to the surface, near where I had began.

Since that dream, even when full awake, even at this very moment, like a scar only I know is there, the sensation of pressure on my skull, and brain, is something I can still feel.

The odd thing about being this old, is I have always been as old as I am in the current moment. Yesterday I was as old as I had ever been, and when I was ten the same was true. Life’s experiences were measured in a full life, because it was that it total, at the time, as it is now.

At some point, however, unless you are certain death is imminent, you have to learn to look at now as a past that will occur in a matter of seconds, then days, then years.

What you once thought is gone, and this has happened so many times you cannot remember all the thoughts that evolved, or failed. Or simply vanished.

Yet here you are today, certain you are right again.  

Fifty degrees is not always fifty degrees. It’s predawn, raining, and a good breeze is coming through the window. At this moment, fifty degrees feels glorious. Last summer was brutal. It was so hot my garden wilted if I didn’t water it for two hours straight in the middle of the day, and my squash stopped producing for a month. Triple digit heat stayed with is for over a week, and upper 90’s stayed longer still.

Of course, back in December it was down in the upper teens for five days, but the cold didn’t bother me the way the heat did. I worked outside in the heat, and if felt as if my body were melting in my boots. The water was warm right out of the tap it was so hot.

Maybe that’s why I think this fifty degree weather feels so good. Yesterday it was close to eighty. Now, it feels more like it should. I’m down to a pair of shorts, and that’s all. I want to feel this. I want to experience the coolness of the air, the feel of my body not sweating, the bare skin totally free of mosquitoes hunting.

Were it dark enough, I would walk around nude on the deck.