dream: the book canyon

We're all walking, slow and single file, along the tops of the books that form the edge of the canyon wall. It is a still and starless night. This path is the only route to wherever it is we all have to go. And these are large books. Much taller than normal ones, and wide enough for our feet to fit between the covers, in the groove the pages make. Most of us are carrying different heavy things, which makes our careful balance --one foot in front of the other, out of one book and into the next -- an exquisite challenge. Since accompanying our every step is a deep blue vertigo swirling up out of the 200-foot drop immediately to our right. It's dingy dark and heavy-shadowed down there in the canyon. I can't see the bottom. But as far down as I can see, the cliff on our side, the one whose top we walk on, is made entirely out of books. Long, incomprehensibly long rows, sitting one neatly on top of another just like in any library, only without the shelves. Different sizes and colors. They seem to be supported on their left side, the direction in which all the spines are turned.

Most of the walkers seem supported, too, or able at least to hold themselves up. Except for me. For some reason, the gravity coming out the canyon to the right is becoming more than I can handle. It reaches for me, tugs at my clothes like gusts of wind, bends me sideways at times til I'm teetering onefooted on the verge, almost losing my balance. As the others trudge on quiet, without complaint, I'm flailing around like a leaf at the end of a branch. It's getting harder by the moment to resist this precarity that wants to blow me right over the edge. Finally, leaning out impossibly right over nothing, then an overcompensating stagger left, and I fall off the bookroad. And land on soft ground, only a few inches lower, and completely stable. Somehow I thought the fall would be more precipitous this way as well. But I'm safe here. Bowed over on my knees and gasping for air, but safe. And I decide just to hug earth and breathe easy for a few minutes. To my right, all the others continue on, apparently oblivious.