Writing Dreams

Let me tell you about a dream I had recently.Wait, wait! Don't turn the page just yet! I promise this dream doesn’t end with me showing up for class unprepared for a test or presentation. Or falling off a cliff.

- BY SHARON SHORT

This dream starts with me standing in the middle of a dense forest, so dense that there's no space for underbrush or any growth other than incredibly tall trees. Pines and oaks and maples so grand that their canopies merge, and it’s impossible for me to tell if it's day or night or if there's even a sky at all. There is no path, and the trees are so closely spaced that I cannot navigate between their trunks. I’m stuck, feel like I'm suffocating.

Then a great wind sweeps through the forest. The trees dissolve all around me, and I see that all along I've been standing just a few yards from the edge of a, well, of a cliff.

But between me and the edge stands a tall shimmering figure—no facial features, no hands or feet, no clothing or hair. Just a floating outline of a humanoid figure.

Though the figure has no eyes, I can tell it’s staring at me. Though it doesn’t speak, I know its presence is specifically for me. Though it looms over me, I feel no fear.

All I know is that I'm glad that the trees are gone, that I can now move freely, and as the wind continues to blow around me, I know that I must dance with this figure—or be swept toward the cliff and eventually over its edge in a long, deadly fall. And so, I step forward, arms wide. The figure and I put our arms around one another's waists and begin a gentle waltz.

When I awoke from this dream, my immediate thought was that the figure was named Story. That the trees binding me on that bluff were publishing and all of its demands. That all I really needed to do to avoid going over the cliff—of despair, anxiety, depression—was to dance with Story.

Just keep dancing with Story.