Sidewalk

I'm the kind of person that's... well. I'm not a bad person, per se. I don't think that I am, anyway. I hope I'm not. However... I am a pretty blatant street name dropper. I know this about myself, and I recognize it as a flaw. Can I continue with forgiveness already assumed? Cool.

So. I'm walking north on Bonnie Brae, and I've just passed by the fire station on Windsor. There's actually a sidewalk there that goes north too, after that. It's exactly like the last place that you'd ever expect a sidewalk to be. Going north and into oblivion, from the corner of Windsor and Bonnie Brae.

It's a real sidewalk, and I'm on it right now. I've been on it lots of times, but for a couple of years I was totally and completely afraid to go onto that sidewalk. It really is the kind of sidewalk that you'd think would lead into an overgrown, choked up, black and gray darkness... like what you'd dream about. It's really like that. It's the kind of thing you've known about and have been familiar with for a long time, but are afraid of.

A couple of years ago though, I went ahead and walked down that sidewalk. It was just way too much like a dream to keep ignoring just because I was afraid of it... so I went down it, and I went and went and went. It's strange to remember that first time that I dared the sidewalk, you know. What with me being on it right now, and all.

It goes north for a little while, for about a quarter mile, and all along its way, it gets more and more choked and choked and overgrown and neglected until it gets to a bona fide country road. I've had dreams about this sidewalk, and the road that it comes to... it's a strange path. It's one of those feeling/meanings that's hard to convey as an awake-time concept. It tries to slip into the dream feeling the more I think about it and try to grasp it, you know...

It's the physical reality and presence of this thing that I'm trying to describe. This spooky, dreamy path that goes north. It's a real, physical thing that's already a  happened thing, and has been a real thing way before the presence of me. I've only discovered it recently, but it was already here long before me, soaking up its own mystery, for an unfathomable amount of time. Do you get it? Understand what I'm going on about?

I'm transcribing the experience of reality every time I write something down, just so you know. No matter how crazy it seems, what I'm recording are things that I'm describing, according to my ever present memory, as a transcription. It's just me taking notes on what is happening to me. Trying to put the experience into a form that I can communicate.

I understand now why I was afraid of that sidewalk to begin with. There weren't monsters down there, or dangerous evil things. Nothing like that. It's more like... being afraid of the kind of dangerous risk that happens inside of a dream. Not a nightmare... just a dangerous dream, that you remember for years and years after, and that you can never really stop thinking about. Until the dream finally bleeds itself away from a memory, and into a terrified, relaxed kind of feeling.

Does any of that make sense?