A Living Magazine - Day 166 - Hellhound or Lucky Dog?

Again, I became lucid, but I can't remember the dream that I emerged out of and into lucid awareness. I do remember though, that I was behind a crowd of people facing the ocean, and when I became lucid they disappeared and it was only me. There was green grass, and light blue and white flags everywhere, flying in the cool wind.

I also felt the pillow under my head (that, being my clothes bag, under the sleeping bag hood), and felt the cool air of the Mobile morning, which was colder than the lucid air. The sun shone so brightly in the lucid state that it hurt my eyes a little bit in BOTH worlds at the same time! [A reminder that, my physical material eyes were closed, and the sun in Mobile was not even up yet!]

The blue around the yellow lucid sun made the sky look like the eye of a "Heavenly Blue" morning glory flower--the "Blue Dawn Flower". And appropriately, that is what I used to call the Spark, before renaming it; before I really knew how to use it. Once I even wrote a song about this flower as a metaphor for what the Spark does, and recorded it with my old band Blue Window...

BLUE DAWN FLOWER

Words and Music by Alex Wall 

Blue dawn flower in my soul
Reaches down to take control
Like the winds inside the cyclone weather
My mind and spirit come together
Blue dawn flower in my soul
I let your spirit take control 

In the springtime, you are are waking
On the green vine, you are making
I can't hide you under cover
And beside you there is no other 

Blue dawn flower in my soul
Reaches down to take control
With a Light that melts the frozen winter
I look inside to find the Center
Blue dawn flower in my soul
I let your spirit take control 

In the autumn you are flying
When the frost comes you are dying
Come the the chaos I am lost in
But I know you'll back again 

Blue dawn flower in my soul
I let your spirit take control
Gonna let you spirit take control
Let your spirit take control...

Recorded by Blue Window

Alex Wall and Gary Tucci
© Copyright 2013
Omega Art and Music
Produced by Alex Wall

Scanning this surreal blue and gold vista above my dream ethereal body, the words above really made sense. In this sense, I think the people standing at the beginning of the lucidity could be called, "The Children of the Blue Dawn".

I knew I would need to wake up the real body and get my ass in gear, but I stayed just a little longer, watching the waves in the distance roll from west to east.

Then I heard a strange call outside the tent, and woke myself up. It sounded like the bark that a deer does, kind of a "caah, caah, caah..." But there were no foot falls. I thought it must have been a bird or maybe a squirrel I never seen before, because I heard it to my right, and then at the foot of the tent, then back on the right, then behind me. I opened the tent flap, and saw some rustling in a tree, but could not locate the critter with the strange morning call.

The sun was just about to spread light across the sky, and I really needed to get going. It was really cool to see the bamboo in the growing daylight. It was so straight and strong! I wished I could grow it in Maine someday. It would be enormously useful. My aunt has it growing in Massachusetts. And, it grows quickly. According to Wikipedia, it is the fastest growing plant in the world, yet is the most primitive of all grasses...

I thought about how, if I could grow it, it would make an excellent heating fuel, with a renewable crop being produced each year.

Pack up was fast. I have a better way to stow my winter coat, and a more efficient way to fold the sleeping bag. I easily slipped across the field and on to the street, making my way to Burger King, passing this interesting and (I thought) very effective way to promote apartments...

These apartments are $650 per month. Alabama has much better rental

prices than I have seen in a long time. This would be more than enough space for a couple.

What caught my eye most especially was that this was designed with SketchUp,

the same CAD program I used to design my self sustaining cottage...

I plan to make something like the above when I return to Maine.

I couldn't believe that I was hungry after stuffing myself the night before, but I was. So, at Burger King I got the "Ultimate Platter"(!). I love the "Senior Coffee"! Not sure why it says "Order Type: Drive Through"? Ha...such irony...

I tried to get online at breakfast, but as I've sometimes found in the past, "WopperWiFi" occasionally sucks. I moved down one doorway to Starbucks and worked there until, some electrical emergency forced them to close the place early, with all of us being calmly swept out the door. Moving down another door, I found a Dunkin Donuts (my old favorite), and settled in there, buying a hot chocolate, since I was completely coffeed up already.

I almost got my post up, when I got the distinct feeling that I had outstayed my welcome, and peacefully moved on about sixty doors to a Subway (actually where I'm writing this very post, at the same time the next evening). They didn't seem to care how long stayed. I got the post done and drew myself up a little map to Hackermeyer Park, which was essentially right across the street. It really looked incredibly inviting from Google Earth...

I felt just a touch of what I've called the "butterflies effect" like I usually get on the first night in a new town. Wasn't quite sure why.

I crossed the NINE lane Airport Boulevard (which is a pedestrian's worst nightmare, with solid lines of racing traffic 24 hours a day, no crosswalks, no walk signs--even the bus stops are dangerously close to the road). But I lived through the experience and was all the more awake for it. Then it was all about taking the two very quiet, all-white, and upscale neighborhood streets (Lleyn Avenue and Conway Avenue). That went fairly smoothly, with some VERY slow drivers in expensive cars, rubbernecking me, with my saggy backpack and the tent poles sticking out of the top--which in this paranoid day and age, might be mistaken for a sawed-off shotgun; a thought that didn't escape my mild paranoia at the time. I was only hoping the local residents might not be similarly paranoid.

When I got to the edge of the park, I simply walked straight into it, past the playground, and quickly into the shadows of the back, to the edge of the woods, where I scanned for a passageway in. I came upon an actual little mostly-unused maintenance road of some kind in the clearing adjacent to the yellow arrow above. Score! It was exceedingly dark in the woods. 

I made one purchase on Black Friday at the Dollar Tree in Montgomery: a combination stylus (which I needed for my tablet to work on music with), LED light and laser pointer. All three have been very useful, especially the laser pointer. Here's why...

This may be a new idea for folks who do a lot of night woods hiking (okay, probably not the majority out there...ha!). I use the laser, because it isn't bright like the flashlight, and I whisk it across the woods in front of me. If a bunch of little dots appear, I know the way would be thick with bushes and dead branches. But, if I see hardly any light reflected, I know the way is clear. Pretty cool idea huh? 

I tried several paths  off the little road, until I found a nice dry, level, open spot that had short but raised hills all around it. I could see myself spending every night there! I setup the tent and tarp calmly, and was just standing there enjoying the night, when...

I heard footfalls in the leaves at the edge of the woods, not big like a deer, but much bigger than a racoon. I froze to eliminate any noise from myself. And it froze too. There was the sound of deep, heavy breathing, almost snort-like. It actually turned into intermittent snorts. Big lungs. Fuck!

I saw a black silhouette move then stop, then move again, in the brighter lit field from where I'd just been. Remembering the "rule of shadows" (my term for the blindness any creature, including humans, suffers when in a brighter place and trying to see what's happening in a darker place) was in my advantage this time. And, I used it greedily. I was pretty sure it was a dog at this point. From the size of the breathing, probably larger, older; maybe fifty to seventy pounds. 

Standing perfectly still and breathing through my mouth so that the tone of my breath would be deeper (dogs hear higher pitches more easily than lower ones). I thought it strange that he wasn't sniffing at the air. I knew he could see slightly better than I could, but not as well as a cat. On the other hand dogs are better at detecting prey that isn't moving. Despite being incredibly agile when chasing prey, cats have a hard time keeping up when a mouse freezes. They sway moving their heads up and down to see the difference between foreground and background objects. Dogs, do just fine looking straight ahead. But the huge advantage a dog has over a cat or a human is their sense of smell is "tens of thousands of times more sensitive than a human".

He DEFINITELY knew I was there, but was unsure precisely where. If he'd been more confident, he could just run right in my general direction, and find me quickly. Why wasn't he that confident? I surmised that perhaps he was a "neighborhood pet" (no one's in particular, but taken care of by the neighborhood). There are a lot of dogs that fit that description here in the south. I saw the most in Birmingham.

He finally did turn and look right at me. The Spark delivered a jolt of warm shivers, preparing me for whatever should occur. My heart was not beating fast. I was not sweating. I was calm, but highly uncomfortable in this situation. I even told myself - perhaps melodramatically - that this was as good a day as any to die. The thoughts one has when all alone and facing a truly unpredictable and potentially dangerous situation NEED to be overly sharp. If you relax even a little bit, you will lose your advantage. What I found myself continually doing though, was preventing the paranoia of worst-case scenarios from overwhelming me. I kept thinking: Keep your mind on the moment ONLY. I shook off the temptation to freak out over and over again, or act prematurely in this waiting contest.

It was all so primitive, REAL, ancient... Fifty thousand generations flashed forward, from a million years ago. I was no longer a man writing a blog each day. I was among the first homo sapien sapiens facing the primitive canids of the archaic world, in the uncertain woods. But I possessed a brain that went from the size of a dog to a human, with a vastly more complex reasoning ability, in the shortest burst of evolution seen in any animal on this planet. I bent down to the backpack and unzipped it slowly, grasping my new baton. 

He knew where I was now, and growled, then snorted. In equal response, I gave a flick of the heavy weapon and it extended rapidly, with an almost instantaneous "click, click, click". He turned and faced me now, growled and then barked for the first time. Well, at least I definitely knew it was a dog. I know dog barks well. I've heard a million of them as I've walked by houses all across this country. His was older, slower. It seemed to faine ferociousness, rather than actually BE ferocious. He seemed just a bit anxious himself. He slowly walked toward me. As a last resort before physical confrontation, I gave the most ominous and raging growl, mixed with a hiss. He jumped back and ran a short distance down the field, stopped and turned back toward me.

This was my chance to fall back to a better defensive position - into the tent - behind two layers of tough nylon. I took it. 

Once in the tent and zipped up, I knew for certain that it wasn't over. I heard him very cautiously come back. Sitting in the middle of the tent floor, and not touching any of the sides, over the next hour and a half, I sat perfectly still. I listened as he approached the head of the tent. He slowly crept, being amazingly quiet in the dry leaves, walking around to the side, then to the other side. I thought he would be sniffing, but he didn't, or didn't need to. The plan at this point was, if he were to bite at, paw at or pull the fabric of the tent, give him a little but firm love tap with the baton. I reasoned - rightly or wrongly - that he would either get angry and really go for it, or give up and run away. 

There was no fucking way I would let him rip this tent apart--it was simply too important to me now. That would constitute an attack. He would get a good beating from the inside of the tent from wherever he made contact. If he continued, I vowed to simply get out and really let him have it. I knew the risk of dropping the baton, but I couldn't figure out a  way to quickly duct tape it to my hand, so I took out the hammer multitool, and held it in my left hand. The claw end of that sucker could really deliver a nasty wound, and allow me to pick the baton up again.

Then a strange feeling passed over me, as I felt his presence less than a foot away from my left side. It was my love for animals, and my attempt to save a big seriously injured dog way back on the first Journey, north of Houston, Missouri. I was conflicted. I would much rather this had been a human threatening me. This dog didn't deserve to be injured, but I HAD to defend myself and my only shelter. I summoned the Spark--which had been supplying a huge amount of energy and clear mindedness to me. I actually prayed, through the Spark to the Creator from which it was derived. I said, "Please. Don't let me have to hurt this animal." At that very second, a house of drunk and partying young people on the other side of the woods (only about 500 feet away), came crashing out on to their back lawn, screaming, laughing, banging on something, honking a horn. The presence of the dog moved away from being right next to me. More noise came, the revving on an engine, the peeling out of tires. The dog ran off.

The combination of not knowing what to expect from me, and the noise of crazy humans not far off was simply too much for him. Instantly I knew I was going to be fine for the rest of the night. I laid the baton beside me, put the multitool back in its case, and pulled out the sleeping bag. I laid my cramped up body down and within just about an hour I was a sleep, checking my watch first. Only two and a half hours had passed by.