6/8/2011 - right up to the edge and past it. . .

I had a dream last night that I was sitting in the driver's seat of my old Toyota 4Runner, a high school graduation present my parents bought for me that I subsequently totaled four months later on the highway one night when I dozed off, veered onto the center divider, and flipped it right onto its head. 

In this dream, though, it was brand new, had barely seen an open road, and I was taking it up a curvaceous path against the side of a mountain with a precipitous cliff to my left.  A passenger sat to my right; it could have been Sam, but just as likely not.  The sun had already set, but lingering light bounced off of the wispy, brush-stroked clouds, the road, my hands that gripped the steering wheel at exactly the '10' and '2' position.  The sky was a palette of rainbow sherbet, and I knew this color would not last.  I knew that the sunset, the drive, the very turning of the planet, would not last. 

But I was happy.

I was deliriously happy as we made our endless way to the top of the mountain, from one bend in the road to the next, but I kept it inside.  It was a peaceful delirium, full of good and purity, as though all the kindness I ever showed, all I had ever loved, all I had to look forward to, had been collected and condensed into one moment, one second just waiting for us to meet it around the next curve, down to this one singular act of driving my reconstituted 4Runner up an unmarked, one-way, narrow and writhing road.  There was nothing else but my passenger and I, the darkening sky, the blackness of the chasm below. 

We eventually reached a turnout, and I pulled into it, heard the tires crunch against the gravel before coming to a stop.  The sky had turned completely grey, full of clouds and heavy with rain, but also brighter than it was before.  I shut off the engine and sat back.  My passenger said nothing, there but not there, and we both looked out over the cliff.  In this new light, I could almost see down into the valley.  Trees.  More precisely, treetops, but there was no telling how tall these tree were, how much higher we sat, perched above it all, and how much farther we'd go beyond those treetops before we'd hit the ground.

I then understood: I could take this car, my passenger, all the hopes and happiness I had felt leading up to this moment, still felt actually, as I put my hand on the ignition--I could slam my foot down on the pedal, feel the car tug and lunge--I could take this car right up to the edge and past it, if I wanted, because right then, I knew that I was in a dream.  I just knew, with unwavering certainty, that nothing would happen to us, that my power was endless, everything permitted, and I could step out of the car, raise a hand up to heaven and call God down himself had I needed him.  I knew that I could plunge down to the trees below, past them, past the ground even, feel the earth push through my skin, and I would be alright.

Everything would be alright in the morning.