A magical vision

I am in a landscape foreign to me … although it is clearly an earthly environment. I am shivering from coldness as I am walking in a wintery landscape. A horrible storm is raging. After a while I can see a gatelike structure in front of me. There is a sign at the gate. With my last energy and power I reach out and wipe away the snow that covers the sign. ’’Welcome to the land of …ness’’…it says.

The first letters in the last word are not readable anymore, and I feel a chill going down my spine when I see that. I hesitate for a while, but not long, coz I don’t have much power left … I just have to seek refuge here. So I knock at the gate. It slowly opens, and a strange and scary looking guardian stares at me.

-We have been waiting for u. he says in an indifferent manner.

They have been waiting for me? I wonder who they are, and how they could know I was coming. And not least … why they have been waiting for me. I want to ask the guardian, but he just signals me impatiently with his hand to come quick inside, and the big gate closes with a loud mesmerizing sound.

To my utter amazement it is summer inside. What a relief! Everything is different here. The sun is shining, and its a warm and pleasant summer afternoon, it seems. And the place has another peculiar quality, that I immediately recognize. Here I am totally free to do what I like, and nobody will bother or try to stop me. I don’t know where I get that knowledge from … I just feel it in a way. I walk leisurely down a small road. It’s in the countryside. Birds are singing in the trees. It’s very beautiful. But everything seem very strange, different in a way … including the birds, like they are not real … but … some kind of inventions. Inventions of a mind. And it’s not my mind … or so I feel. And the landscape looks like something from a fairy tale almost. Very archaic and almost childlike. Like the way I viewed the world in my childhood.I get a bit afraid … I feel there is something unknown lurking in the landscape, watching me … but I control my fear and urge to run away. Everything is better than the winter storm outside anyway.

I hear a loud sound of something in the outskirts of the forest. I cant believe my own eyes at first. Somebody has actually painted a thunder boom inside a bush. It desperately tries to free itself but cannot … the whole situation looks very funny. As I stare at the thunder boom it changes and becomes a cat my family owned when I was a child. I recognize it now. It’s Snow White, the white cat I loved so much when I was little, and who died in the old barn when she had kittens. It was so incredible cold that day, and when the kittens were born they immediately froze to the concret floor … and so did Snow White. She was barely alive when I found here. Now Snow White is crying again, crying for help … with the exact same voice she cried with when I found her the day she died. I look at her, and feel a strong urge to go and help her … but another voice in me tells me not to go there for anything in life! That it is a horrible trap … and I will be doomed if I as much as touch her. I feel the horror creeping up my body as I realize what is going on, and understand what a dangerous place this is. But I also understand that this is not the place to become weak and show fear, that I must give the impression of being master of the situation and pretend to be strong and self assured … and so I soon pull myself together and tell her I am sorry but I don’t have time now. I must go.

I walk for a while down the road, and suddenly a waiter comes around the corner, carrying a dish with a lid with something under. He makes a polite bow.

-Sir … a scream is asking for permission to enter your mind.

-Permission denied!

The waiter smiles sheeply.

-Cunt! he shouts. I turn around to see if there is someone behind me, but there is nobody. So obviously the waiter is directing this insult at me.

-Go to hell! I shout back. -What kind of behaviour is this?! Coming here and shouting like that at innocent decent people? Shame on you!

The waiter actually blushes from shame and retreats. I realise that I have won a little victory, and that I did the right thing by shouting back and not letting that waiter insult me without opposition. I feel a little bit uplifted by this. A little bit stronger and more courageous. I continue down the road. After a little while I cross a stream, and next to the stream I see a lovely flower unfolding itself just as I pass by. I get very curious and bow down to smell the flower. To my amazement I hear the voice of my mother coming from it;

-What the fuck are you doing now, you bloody….

Horrified I start running. I cant understand this. My mother never used to swear like that when she was alive?! I remember clearly the day she hanged herself. From her mouth a line of black dead darkness was pouring down her cheek. When she was alive this darkness eagerly tried to incorporate everybody in the vicinity inside itself … so it could grow … but it was not clever enough to catch me anymore.

After having run like a maniac for a long time, maybe many centuries … I see a little hut in the forest. An old elflike man with a long white beard and a strange hat is looking at me with small piecing eyes. He looks friendly and waves me inside. For some reason I trust him and enter his hut. He offers me a chair to sit on and pics up a magnifying glass. He looks into my nose and further up the brain.

-You are not a free person. he sighs after a while.

-How can you tell?

-Its easy to tell.

-Really? But…

-Do you want to be free?

-Of course! Everybody wants to be free.

-No. Nobody wants to be free. Except …

-Except who?

-Except from the lunatics.

-Nobody except from the lunatics? And why not?

He leaned forward and whispered something into my right eye. I could see his words coming out of his mouth. They had a blue colour.

-The price is too high. he said.

-Too high?

-Yes, way too high. For most people.

-But I…

-No! You cant pay the price either. Not yet. Trust me.

-Ok. Thank you. Farewell then my friend. I whispered.

He nodded friendly, and I went out in the sunshine again. I wandered for a little while, and soon I discover a man down in a small valley. He is standing with his back towards me. His head is covered by a black hood. I walk slowly and without a sound down towards the man. He doesnt move, and I feel it might not be a wise thing to talk to him … but I get carried away by my curiousity. I need to know who he is.

-Hello!

He turns slowly around, and I get a real shock. Inside the hood is only an enormous eye! An eye that stares at me from some unknown depths, from something I cannot describe. Or something that I dare not recognize or think about maybe. The eye slowly changes into a smile … or a grin rather.

-Who are you? I ask.

-You know who I am.

I stare at the man. Yes I know who he is. I have always known … maybe even before I was born.

-I could hear your conversation with the old wise man. he says.

-You did?

-Have you ever killed another human being?

-No of course not!

-You should.

-Should I kill someone else? But why …

-In order to liberate yourself.

-To liberate myself?

-Yes, to free yourself from the laws of your fellow man. Only then can you become free. I shake my head in denial and tell him how insane I think his suggestion is. He turns around and walks away. But before he goes I notice his face and how full of contempt it is. I wanted him to like me, and am sorry I disappointed him like that … but feel there is nothing I can do about it. There is no way I am gonna kill somebody, not even to become free.

I continue on my journey down the valley. In the distance I hear the most fascinating music. After a while I come to a waterfall. This is where the music comes from. The music is carried by water butterflies emanating from the waterfall. They fly towards me and circle over my head. And I can hear the most wonderful melodies. The butterflies promise something very important to me. They promise to feed my spirit with melodies, as long a I want to see them. Then the vision is over, and I ’’wake up’’ in my bed.