Just Like Smoke

This represents one of the few times that I have successfully translated an image from my dreams onto paper.

The world was white, blindingly white, as I imagine pure untouched heat to look. But the temperature is pleasant. Warm with a gentle breeze. I can close my eyes and imagine myself onto the beach. Only, when I open my eyes again, the white world remains. I realize that the only genuinely disconcerting fact about all of this is that I am unable to tell if I am standing on air or if there is some kind of surface beneath my feet.

Suddenly, that no longer matters as I feel a strong wind from somewhere far below. The wind is not cold, it is not hot. Again, it is quite comfortable, almost comforting. But this wind is visible and tangible, made of some sort of black crystalline substance. It begins to shred my clothes and cling to my body. The stuff glimmers upon my skin almost as scales, and I cannot scratch or tear them off. The smokey wind has become me--or I have become it. I am not sure which.

The wind continues to swirl around me. And I feel my form changing. It is a strange feeling, almost as though I am being turned inside out, like my soul is becoming my skin and my human shape is being chafed away, dissolved, discarded. It is strangely painless; only a gentle, almost funny tingling sensation crosses over my body. I feel a new body, a new power, a new heart beating fiercely, a new spirit. However, it is not so new that it feels unfamiliar. Rather, my body is now the reflection of my soul, now fierce and free. And I am thrust forward from the smoke into the brightness of the white world.
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Copyright Ashley Mutek.
Black gel pen on paper.
July 18, 2011.