Speaking Runes

Speaking Runes

I find myself near the entrance of dark cave high on a mountain. How I got there is still a mystery, I'm afraid of heights, and I have asthma, so climbing at ten thousand feet is quite above my physical capacities. Sometimes, it just doesn't do to ask too many questions.

In my childhood nightmare, the golden buttons of the record player started spinning slowly, and in every direction possible. The two buttons somehow superposed themselves one on the other, and became several buttons, each spinning on an orbit different than the next, some elliptical, some counterclockwise, some round, some square, some triangular, and every one at different speeds, some pulsing left to right also, some inwards and outwards. In the middle of this swirling mass was always a casket, opened, with different people I knew, loved or cared for in it. I could never get through the pulsing mass to attain the casket before it closed, before the familiar faces became skeletons of death. I could never say goodbye.

I don't know why this dream comes to me now, thirty years later, although it has never been resolved in my mind. It stopped when I was sixteen, a stormy night when I saw my own face in the casket.

There is a surprising sensation of warmth in this cave. The entrance was not difficult to find, it was as though some guiding hand had its role to play. A series of limestone boulders, atypical for the quartz formation of the mountain, led me to the opening. It was as if the cave itself drew me to its location.

I had always heard that caves were fairly cool. This one was at comfortable warming temperature and I told myself that if this were the case in most mountain caves, all people had to do was search for their openings in order to find shelter. There must be lessons in survival, but was recognizing rock formation to identify possible hidden caves part of it?

Its walls were completely covered in red moss, all shades of red. The floor was of soft earth, the air was fresh, and lending an ear, I heard the trickle of water, which took me no time to locate. Truly a mountain climber's haven. Except that I had not been climbing mountains four hours earlier. I had been sitting at my computer thinking about a poem I should be writing. A poem about discovering hidden truths.

Where I am now, night has come and the moon shines brightly. It is the full moon tonight. Suddenly the red moss seems to become transparent yielding underneath strange patterns which seem to begin to glow, adding a reassuring light. I can only assume that the moon continues on its trajectory and that it has indeed become full, for after an hour or so the patterns have become quite identifiable as ancient runes. These elaborate symbols popping out of the wall are completely legible, or would be if one knew how to interpret them.

The runes seem to understand my quandary for as soon as I wonder about their meaning, they begin to speak out loud. The sounds they make are not human, a sort of cross between high bird trilling and a snakes hissing, but somehow I understand what they are saying. A sort of telepathy is happening.

I discover that they come from an ancient civilization, from the planet Pa, in a distant galaxy now completely swallowed by a black hole. They were a civilization of telepaths who could also predict the future, and who were responsible for the creation of all human dreams, the billions of them that we all dream at night.

I am once again trapped inside of my nightmare. The runes have now completely detached themselves from the cave's walls and spin slowly in the same patterns I knew so intimately, recreating so exactly the impression of the dream which plagued me as a child. A dream where the answers were never clear.

Suddenly I realize that the runes are the glowing and spinning only for my personal comprehension. The runes asked me why would a sixteen-year-old dream of his own death? Why would a young child dream of the deaths of every person who touched his life until that moment?

The answer came to me just as easily. There is no answer. Some things in life can only be imagined, and to waste time thinking about answerless questions serves no purpose. The runes asked again: had I, thirty years later, after consulting gurus and shamans, Freudian and Jungian psychologists, ever found a reason behind this dream? No, I had not. Because it was the Pa people's way of showing me that I must stop seeking imaginary answers to imaginary questions, just because I am capable of dreaming about them.

The imaginary questions contained in the spinning runes are like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The pot of gold doesn't exist, but it comforts us to think that one day we'll find it. The answers I have sought all of my life have no more pertinence than the luck at the end of a rainbow. It's just a useless way to occupy time. There are more important things in life.

The runes tell me that one day soon they will show me another hidden cave where I will find more answers.

I slowly realize that I have been daydreaming. There is no more cave high on a deserted mountain. There are no red moss covered walls, and the runes, golden and glowing, have stopped spinning, leaving a sensation of déjà vu in my head. I feel a great sense of loss. Until I look at the screen in front of me. While daydreaming, it appears that my fingers have been busy typing the words as the runes have spoken them to me. I will go to sleep and have peaceful dreams, for once in my lifetime.

(998 words)

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