One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy

I fall awake into The Void. Ahh. Are there stars? I make out a few twinkles of light in the distance. Yes, tonight anyway. Where should I go? Nowhere in particular...

The Dreaming, as it always does, finds an amusing solution. I fall into a grassy clearing in the middle of an evergreen forest. First, I notice how the grassy is uneven and matted and trampled. This is wild grass, not a kept lawn. There's fallen leaves dancing in the wind. Yes, it's windy. I look at the rustling trees. The type of trees don't match with the fallen leaves, but no matter. I know exactly where I am: the middle of Nowhere.

I look up and it is overcast. Not separate clouds, just an even blanket of gray. A storm must have just passed through. I'm fine with that. A change in the weather is always welcome.

The clearing I'm in is, oh, about the size of a football field but irregularly shaped. I turn to my right and see a man walking with his daughter. He looks middle-aged, with glasses and a mustache. He wears a light brown blazer. Corduroy? That's quaint. His clothes are a bit rumbled and his hair looks like it was neatly combed this morning but has been tussled by the wind throughout the day. He leads by the hand a little girl. Blonde pigtails. Her eyes seem dazzled by the leaves as they dance.

"What's going on here?" I ask.

"There's been a disturbance in the universe," he replies, but seemingly unconcerned. He continues on with the girl. I look past them and see a group of about 20 people farther off, near the end of the clearing. They look like mothers and young children at a picnic. They're assembling as if to leave, picking up their blankets and bags.

I think, They came out for a tea party during the storm. Now that the storm is over, they're going home. Ha! I leave them be. I look up again, noticing again the gray sky.

I fly upwards to get a better lay of the land. I get high enough to see clear over the trees. In every direction it's just trees and patches of grass. No roads, no cars, no buildings. Definitely Nowhere. And I start to think I don't even know "when" I am. I couldn't judge much from the people or their clothing. They don't look contemporary. Could have been 20 years ago, or 50, or 100. The best clue was the style of the man's glasses, but even then I can only speculate.

I rear back a bit as I'm hovering, like I'm pulling back a swing. I allow myself to fall. Usually when I fall, it's like I'm riding an invisible slide. But this time, I think of a swing and so my trajectory follows a different curve. I swoop down through the trees and delight in the thrill. I am flung back upward into the gray sky until it fills my vision with solid color and I dissolve back into the waking world.