Dancing in the Storm

Before my tired eyes open, I feel a rumbling beneath me, shaking me, disturbing my fitful dream. It sounds like heavy hammering, God pounding on the Earth’s foundations, beating the stubborn core into correction.

After the rumbling, I listen to the silence, straining my ears to hear, to listen, in a vain attempt to gauge distance. Does the storm come or go?  Will it build or evaporate?  Have I already felt the brunt?  Or is the storm coming and I have yet to experience the wind, the rain, brilliant flashes of lightning and pounding peals of thunder?

There’s a thrill in the storm, an excitement of the unknown, and an erotic flirtation with danger. The natural instinct is to seek shelter, to hide in a place of safety and warmth until the storm passes.  But I find myself drawn to it like a magnet.  Something inside; something beaten, broken, and bent stirs from her slumber.  She’s a wretched thing, almost unrecognizable, covered in the black filth of despair and dejection.  She awakens, lifts her pitiful head and stares at me with haunted eyes. 

I try to fight her.  I try to keep her submissive.  I try to stop her from taking control, because she’s pure rage, pure anger and pure destruction.  Many times she has wreaked havoc, destroying what I’ve worked so hard to build, causing many of the beautiful dreams I’ve created to evaporate in a swirling mist of chaos.

A flash of lightning fills the room, causing even my closed eyes to see.  I hold my breath.  I wait.  I know the boom of thunder is soon to follow.  My inner wraith stands, holds out her arms and waits to embrace its roar.  I feel it coming. It starts out in a low grumble, then builds and grows and increases until it’s so loud, so strong and so close the bed shakes, the windows vibrate in their panes, and the walls shudder. 

But my wraith, oh, my wraith dances.  She lifts her arms above her head and begins bending her wrists, extending her fingers, rolling her shoulders, swaying her back, moving her hips, and stomping her feet in the puddles, spinning in circles.  She feeds off the storm, letting its energy fill her and surge through her body.

The rain falls.  First a small tapping, followed by a pounding deluge.  My wraith screams as the cool water washes over her and rivers of black snake away from her, diluting and fading as it mixes with pooling water.  Various shades of gray emerge beneath the outer filth, yet she continues to dance, continues to scream, and continues to shake in fear. 

The storm rages, the wind howls, the rain beats upon the side of the house and against the window pane, lightning strikes and the thunder roars while my wraith dances. I want her stop and seek refuge, yet I’m also excited by her lack of fear in the face of the storm, her ability to dance amongst the elements that destroy her.  She fades.  Each drop of rain carries another part of her away, diluting her, yet she continues to dance.

I cannot watch any longer, yet I cannot stop.  Instead, I curl into a ball, place my hands over my ears to muffle as much of the storm as possible, and then allow myself to drift back into another dream. I know she will return again.

Till next time,

~T.L. Gray

My Hatfields & McCoys Nightmare

Thank you, Hatfields and McCoys, for interrupting my fantastical dreams and replacing them with a nightmare.

I’ve heard that dreams are a way for our subconscious to work out problems we couldn’t deal with while awake. I’m beginning to think that is true.  Often times, when there are things that stress me out in the light, I struggle with in the night.  Thanks to Fox, and their insatiable need to cancel every good show that airs on their network, I’ve spent a night or two trying to reconcile the answers to the cliffhangers that will never be resolved.  I wish networks, who decide to cancel a show, would at least provide an ending and not leave us frustrated without a resolution.  I’m now very reluctant to follow another Fox show for this very reason.  I fear I’ll be trying to ‘find’ the ending to Finder in my nightmares for months to come. Okay, time to get off that rant and back to my point.  This is part of ‘the’ point, but I’ll move on.

Monday, I began watching the new mini-series, Hatfields & McCoys on the History Channel, and I’m so frustrated at the situation, based on a real story, that could have been avoided if not for the pride of mankind. It would have taken two-word phrases by each man (I’m Sorry and Forgive Me) to have prevented a mini-civil war between West Virginia and Kentucky.  Granted, it seems the escalation of the tension between these two families were inflamed by instigators on both sides, not primarily by the two patriarchs, but their examples and a lack of humility and leadership, fueled the flames.  There was a lot of talk about God, but no evidence of His character in either; all judgment and wrath, but no mercy or forgiveness.

 

Needless to say, my dreams were plagued with trying to work out a resolution between the two families, which included desperate appeals from a distant relative (distant –as in a generational great-great-great granddaughter, traveling through time to bring a passionate plea for peace between her two grandfathers, ending with one killing the other).  

Perhaps there’s some part of me, recently discovering on Ancestry.com a lineal connection to the Civil War, and my family coming from the same area, which reacts to this story on a personal level.  Who knows?  I have learned one thing: I’m so thankful to have been born in this generation.  I don’t think I would have done well in that particular time period of our history.  I can’t imagine the nightmares that would constantly plague me in search of solutions. I hope there’s enough resolution in the last part of this mini-series tonight for me to have a restful sleep, but I’m not holding my breath.

Till next time,

~T.L. Gray