Spare Dream

Took a nap. Restless sleep, hot. Dreamed I rented a hovel on an Indian reservation in a place that reminded me of our drive from Phoenix to Telluride in 2002. Dusty, bare, endless weaves of layered mesas in colors from tan to lilac to sage. Very few plants but oh! A universe of skies. And clouds. The hovel? Sides of cracked, fissured earth, a door of wood so old it was nearly dust itself. Water from a hand pump. Outside toilet. A cot bed, springs & frame. Mattress propped on the wall. One straight-backed chair. No glass in any of the windows, but what a blessing with those views of that sky, that world above. As I was hanging my few clothes on nails along one wall & rinsing my dishes {enough only for one} in a big metal bowl of water I'd already pumped, a man drove up in an ancient and rusty truck. An Indian man with hair black & sleek to his belt. A threat, somehow, in his walk as he approached me. He said, "White woman -- you're not welcome."

'My money was acceptable enough,' I told him.

"What do you want here?"

'Do you welcome someone who is only seeking silence, solitude, and the sky?'

He was a beautiful man. I felt him. I watched him. He looked at the sky for a long time. Then he said, "For a price."

'What price?'

"You make love to me."

I turned and went into the hovel. He followed and then stopped in surprise, to see me re-packing my clothes and dishes.

"Is that a no, then?" he asked, his voice changed.

'Oh -- I would have made love to you freely, if you would have said anything but what you did. You're a beautiful man. Beautiful. But to have sex as payment for something I don't owe? Never.'

Then I woke up. I was angry, upon awakening, because I'd really wanted him and he'd made it impossible.

I have no idea where that dream came from. To be stripped like that, to bare earth and the most minimal of shelter -- all of it a backdrop for a sky that brought my soul back into my throat. And a place for meeting such an exquisite man -- a man obviously as confused in his own way as I was. I'm still hungry - to touch his hair, to breathe it, lay on his back with my breasts tangled in it, my head back and my eyes staring at that sky.

I was asleep less than 30 minutes and I FEEL like I lived a week in some parallel universe. Like being given a vision but not being able to explain it to myself. Just react, over & over.