Though technically not a classic dream, I want to include this experience I had many years ago in this journal, because of its dream-like nature. This experience took place in Sedona Arizona and is a true story. Make what you will of it.
I call it:Spirited Away or The Haunted Canyon
I am camping out in the red rocks canyon in Sedona Arizona with my two friends. We are on a road trip. My friends, Jeffrey and Angela, remind me of Mickey and Mallory from the movie "Natural Born Killers". They aren't killers, but they have similar personalities as Mickey and Mallory. They are into experimenting with not doing anything to manifest money for food or gas for the van. Jeffrey also has this annoying habit of finding road kill and putting it in a plastic shopping bag and bringing it in the van with us, maybe to collect the bones or something. But the maggots and the smell is gross. All of this is getting to me and I am feeling very frustrated with being on this road trip with them. However, I don't feel like hitchhiking through the Mojave Desert in July.
I am up by myself at night by my campfire thinking about all this and what I am going to do. The fire is getting low. I am also thinking about the encounter with a lone coyote I had earlier today. I was walking down a trail when a coyote walks out of the woods ten feet in front of me and stops and we look at each other for a few moments, both regarding the other. Then he goes on.
The fire burns out and the new crescent moon is low in the sky. I walk off to go to sleep in the van. Funny, there wasn't a cactus in front of the van before. I have a moment of clarity as I wave my hand through the cactus and I realize in the back of my mind that there really is no cactus there. But I forget about this and crawl into my sleeping bag in the van.
I wake up in the middle of the night and there is a demon sitting at my feet staring at me. I can see his silhouette and his red eyes. His head is shaped like Batman's. His eyes are glowing a dim red. I sit up and look closely at him and his skin. His skin is like black avocado skin but slowly crawling around on his flesh. I am caught up in it until I suddenly get creeped out and jump out of the van.
It is dawn outside and I am talking to my brother. He is standing behind me. I don't remember what we are talking about. Someone comes over and tells me that there is a man who wants to smoke a bowl with me. I follow him onto the woods around in circles but there is nobody else there. Then I realize that I am all alone. Weird. I go back to find my brother but he is gone. Instead there is a Native American sitting there.
"Watch this." he says as he stares into my eyes. His skin is the same color as the red rocks of the mesas behind him. Then I notice that I can see the mesas through him. He is becoming transparent. The he becomes invisible. Then he fades back in and is solid flesh and blood again, still staring into my eyes.
"Wow! How did you do that? Do that again!"
He does it again. But this time I try real hard to keep my eye on him and to pay attention real hard to try to keep seeing him. HE becomes totally invisible except for the tip of his right ear, which I am staring hard at. It looks like a highlight reflecting off an invisible bottle. Then he fades back in.
Now there are many Native Americans also fading in and out, the same colors as the red rocks.
"How do you do that?! I wish I could do that! Imagine what I could do if I could become invisible!"
"Would you like to learn?"
"Yes! You could teach me?"
"Yes, on one condition. That you promise to live here with us...forever."
"Hmmmm...." It is tempting. I think about it for a while. "Actually, I don't think so."
He smiles and they all disappear for the last time.
I stay confused and am talking to random people, strangers mostly, and my brother. Presently Jeffrey and Angela are awake and I tell them excitedly about how it is possible to become invisible! Jeffrey says "Like this?" and he fades out.
"Hey! I didn't know you could do that! How did you learn?"
"I sold my soul."
He walks away and I am left by myself. I am confused, but things appear to be normal again. Whatever that is. About a half hour later Jeffrey and Angela come back, but this time they are acting normal. I ask Jeffrey why he was acting strange a while ago. He has no idea what I am talking about. He thinks I am acting strange.
Angela says that I am talking funny. And I am. I am talking very quietly and all my consonants are running together.
I go to the van to get a t-shirt. While I'm in the van I see two people in there. Well, they are half human and half animal. The one who is passed out drunk is real fat and half frog. He is drooling on himself. The tall skinny guy with the shifty eyes is part javelina (hickory hog). He has bony protuberances on his face under his skin, and some tusks coming out. He looks like he wants to stab me and steal my shoes.
"Who are you guys? What are you doing here?"
"Oh, We are traveling with you guys back to Oregon."
I am pissed off because nobody asked me if it was alright with me if we take these two filthy riders.
I get my shirt and as I am looking at the shirt I see big lice bugs crawling around on it.
"Jeffrey! Angela! Look! There is lice in our clothes!"
They come over. Jeffrey says "Where?" I point to the lice but when he looks at it they disappear. "I don't see any."
"Well, they disappear when you look at them."
"You're crazy!" He says and they walk away.
"I am not crazy" I think to myself, but I am not so sure. I need to get away from these people in order to get my mind together. I start walking down the trail. I am looking at my feet. "What is going on? Am I crazy? No. Out here I am fine."
The sun sets and it is dusk. Well, I better go back before it gets dark. I turn around and I see that I am on top of a mesa in the middle of a canyon. What the hell? There is no trail, there is no way to get back. How did I get here?
I am very confused.
The shadows are growing. I notice shadows all around. Shadows of people walking around, but there is nobody. The shadows become a bunch of naked bald transparent people. They are all about five feet tall. They are drifting around. They walk, but I don't think that their feet touch the ground. Some of them come over to me. They are smiling.
"Who are you guys?" I ask, but they just keep smiling and remaining silent. Even though they all look alike and appear genderless, I can tell that some are male and some are female. "Why don't you guys talk? Look, I'm lost. I need to get back to my camp. Can you guys help me?" They all drift away, not interested in me anymore. All except one. He is standing beside me to my left. He looks deep into my eyes and smiles. He holds out his hand about an arms distance in front of my face. I can tell he wants me to touch his hand. I reluctantly reach my hand out. I am scared. What will it feel like? I touch his hand and am surprised that it feels solid. It is solid because I now see that I am touching a mile marker on a paved road!!!
I am too confused. I take my hand off. Now the mile marker is the guy again! "You tricked me!" I said. He just smiles in a way that tells me that he didn't trick me, I am just very confused. A car is coming over the hill. As the light from its headlights shine on us I see that I am talking to the mile marker. I realize that I am probably insane and that I better get out of the road. I jump behind a boulder and hide as the car passes. It is a cop car. "Whoa, that was close."
I look at the boulders and they are all hanging out and laughing. They are like giant rock people, all hanging out at the foot of the mesa. They are smoking cigarettes. I could really go for a cigarette. It would really help me in this state.
"Hey, can I have a cigarette?"
The rock people look at me as if they just became aware of me. One of them says "I'll tell you what, I'll give you a cigarette if you close your eyes and take twenty steps backwards."
"Whatever. Sure, OK" And I close my eyes and start walking backwards. But I feel like my naked bald transparent friend has something to say in his silent way, or I feel instinctually that I should check in with him. I look at him, an arms distance away to my left, and he is slowly shaking his head gesturing 'no.'
I stop and look behind me and I am about two steps from walking off a cliff! "You guys tried to trick me! I could have died!" I yell at the boulder people. They all just start laughing real hard and slapping their knees.
I leave angrily. My friend comes with me. We look out across the canyon and I try to see which direction my camp is. My friend points across the canyons to a distant hill with a road on it. That is where my camp is. My friend starts to walk down the steep hill and he gestures me to follow him. We are actually sliding down the hill, and it is more like a cliff. We are setting rocks loose and they roll down ahead of us. I look up at the tallest mesa to the right of me and there is a huge Raven staring at me. The Raven must be half a mile tall perched on a mesa that must be a few miles away, just staring at me. It makes me kind of nervous.
Down at the bottom of the hill we are in a big floodplain. It is easy to walk down here. My friend is guiding me back to my camp. There are all kinds of people around. Most of them are the short naked bald transparent people, some are Native Americans, and others are strange grotesque costumed witches. They kind of look like the Skeksis from 'the Dark Crystal.'
Then I stop and am spellbound by a beautiful woman with long red hair wearing a red nightgown standing in front of a flowering tree. She has her eyes closed in blissful concentration with her hands extended towards the tree. She is humming a melody quietly to herself and radiating pink energy towards the tree, which the tree absorbs. I watch her for a while until my friend gets my attention again and leads me away.
We walk up to a huge parked RV. There are lights on and country music playing from a radio. There is a big guy wearing a cowboy hat and drinking a beer and flipping burgers on a grill. His wife is there and some teen age kids. The big guy is smoking a cigarette. I walk up out of the shadows with my long dreadlocks wearing nothing but a skirt and ask for a cigarette.
They look afraid of me and they are avoiding me. The wife clutches at her husband. He moves away from me. The teens are staring at me like they never saw a crazy hippie wearing a skirt wandering in the desert at night before.
I feel that familiar feeling of confusion and that something doesn't quite make sense here, and it is probably me. SO I think that it would be best if I leave and go off and be with my transparent friend. And that is what I do.
I get the feeling that my friend is laughing to himself at me, or with me if I would just laugh, but I am too confused again. Now there is a Native American with me. He tells me that encounters with the living are always confusing. He tells me it is best to stay away from the living.
My friend is leading me in a straight line to my camp, over every obstacle, not around. If there is a mesa in our way we climb it and go down the other side, we don't go around it. And the whole time that huge Raven is observing me closely.
We come to a ravine that is in our way. I stop and look for an easy way down. That is when I notice the people hiding in the bushes. They have their hair in a bunch of thin braids. And the braids are braided around twigs with leaves at the end, so that their heads look like bushes. This is so they can blend in. I ask the Native American who these people are and he says "I don't know, we don't really talk to them. They were here before we got here, and they keep to themselves." The bush people crawl out of the bushes and walk across the ravine as if on an invisible bridge.
Oh, that's how you get across! I start to follow them but I notice that my friend stays behind. He always stays if I am walking into danger. That is his way of communicating silently to me. So I walk back to him and he leads me down the ravine and up to the other side.
On the other side I see a bunch of people sitting around a campfire drinking beers and playing guitar and smoking cigarettes. It is funny that what I really want the most is not water, or food, or sleep, but a cigarette. And I don't even smoke! So I walk up to them and introduce myself. They seem cool. They seem like people that could be my friends and I feel great to get to hang out with them. They invite me to sit down. And we are talking. I am telling them about how confused I am and I can't make sense out of what's going on. They just shrug and say that everything seems pretty normal to them and I seem pretty normal. Yeah, I guess everything makes sense. I ask one for a cigarette and he says "Sure" and he starts looking through his backpack.
Just then someone in the tent unzips the tent door just a little bit and she says "What the hell are you doing?!"
"I am just hanging out here with these people. Am I being to loud? I didn't know you were in there sleeping. I am sorry."
"What the hell are you talking about?" I am confused again. I look at my new friends but there is nobody there, and there is no fire, just me outside this woman's tent in the middle of the desert.
"Just leave right now!" She says.
"OK" I reply and I take off.
Encounter with the living.
The sun rises and my guide is still leading me. He is always walking or standing to my left. I spend this day talking to Native Americans, rocks, bushes, and a coyote for a while. It is amazing that I am have not drank any water, even though my mouth is dry as a bone, I don't feel tired, thirsty or hungry. Just dry. Dry and dusty as the mesa.
I don't remember much of this day except those giant witches and that redhead girl with the red nightgown radiating pink light for another flowering tree. She is so beautiful! During the day the Raven flies around in the sky. She is the queen of this land. It is only when she passes in front of the sun and her shadow falls on me do I see that she is just slightly transparent, like obsidian, and I can see the sun slightly through her, like a dim dark reddish brown glow.
At night she perches on the mesa again. This night is the night it all comes to a conclusion. This is the night that I reach my camp again. This is how it happens.
My friend leads me to a ravine at the foot of the mountain right below my camp. I know that right above me is the dirt road that I am camped at, if my friends are still there waiting for me. This is a steep narrow ravine.
I hear the Raven say to my friend telepathically "Now you have him. He is trapped. He is weak, tired, and thirsty, now you must drink his soul!"
It all dawns on me that of course my guide serves the queen, and that they want me to die and to steal my soul so that I will become one of them, forever sentenced to wander the red rock canyons. Oh No! There is no way to escape! The only way out is up in all directions! I am trapped!
There is only one thing to do, and that is to reason with my friend, and appeal to his higher understanding of what is right.
"Sit down, I need to talk to you." We both sit down. "Look, I heard what the raven queen said to you. I know that you are planning on drinking my soul. But don't you see, that you don't have to do that? Don't you know that you have a soul also, and that your soul is more than enough and what do you need with my soul? Nothing! My soul will do you no good. Everyone deserves their own freedom and their own soul. You want to be free also. That is your right. Claim your freedom, don't follow orders from this Raven Queen. You know what I say is true, do the right thing and let me go. And I will always remember you as a friend."
He stares at me deeply for a while, then speaks for the first and only time. He says "Dannon, you speak the truth, and you have shown me the truth. I have always known it, and this has been a test for you, and you have passed the test. I will let you go, your camp is down the road that is on top of this hill. Your camp is about a quarter mile away. Go, and remember, we will meet only once again, and you will recognize me, and we will meet as friends. Go now, before it is too late."
I start climbing the steep steep ravine, sending rocks, dirt, and dust sliding and falling below me. I look and see an army of skeletons wearing armor running towards me. "Oh shit!" I just run and climb up that hill as fast as I can. The army is closing in on me!!! It is hard to run up this hill, it keeps falling apart on me. I have to grab bushes to pull myslef up but most of them become uprooted in the soft pebbly soil. My skirt gets caught on a cactus! I try to get it unstuck but it just gets more stuck on the cactus. I hear the Raven laughing. Fuck it! I take off the skirt so now I am naked. Just wearing my sandals.
I run up that ravine and pull myself onto the pullout of the road. There is a bunch of teen-agers parked up there drinking beer and partying. They are all laughing at me. There is a cop up there also. He says "That is indecent exposure!"
"I don't care! I got to get back to my camp. See ya!" And I take off running down the road.
I am no longer lost. I know exactly where I am. I relax and look at the witches in dinosaur costumes dancing with the pine trees in the moonlight. Wow, how beautiful!
The Raven screeches above me and I hear her say "He's getting away! We can't let him get back to his camp! Send the guy on the motorcycle after him!"
In the distance I hear a motorcycle start and I hear it approaching. I run as fast as I can to my camp and slide open the door and jump inside and slide the door shut. Jeffrey and Angela are in there and they wake up "What the hell are you doing?"
"Shhh. Be quiet! They're after me!"
"Who is after you?"
"The Raven Queen and the skeleton army and the guy on the motorcycle. Be quiet!"
"You are fucking crazy! There is no such thing!"
I get confused again just like I always do when I talk to the living. So, this isn't real? If this isn't real, then there is no Raven Queen. If there is no Raven Queen then she couldn't send a guy on the motorcycle after me. I heard her order the motorcycle guy to get me before I heard him start his motorcycle, so that means that there is no motorcycle guy.
"Do you hear a motorcycle coming?"
"Yes. So what?"
OK, so there IS a guy on a motorcycle. And he pulls into our camp, and he circles the van three times, then drives away.
I crawl into the drivers seat and there is a nun sleeping in the passenger seat. I fall asleep. I wake the next morning and everything is back to normal, except my vision is all blurry and it wasn't for four days before I could focus my eyes again.
That is my spirited away story of the haunted desert. And it is a true story. It happened to me many many years ago, before I ever heard of Studio Gibli and maybe before there was a studio Gibli.
But I won't go back there again. Because I know that if I do, that will be the time that I meet Death again, and this next time he won't let me go.
Edit: The next week Jeffrey and Angela discovered that they were infested with lice, but miraculously I didn't have lice, even though I was living in the same van as them. Also, anything I asked for came to me for the next two months. A stranger came up to me and gave me two hundred dollars for gas and food. I didn't even talk to him first. I was kind of in a manic state for three weeks after that, feeling great, but slightly crazy. Everything was funny and weird. But my craziness is what got us back to Oregon and protected me from getting lice.
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Originally Posted by Dannon Oneironaut
Psychedelic sex is pretty damn awesome. It's not the purpose of some of my trips of course, just a lovely treat.
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