BoldUlysses.com

Mornings… I had forgotten how crisp and clean they are until I experienced the last two, yesterday during an all-nighter, and today waking up from the “recovery sleep” following it.

I feel like Max in “Where the Wild Things Are,” except that instead of waking up to a dinner still patiently warm, I’m waking to a morning whose smile reminds me of someone. The journey through the night was the most adventurous I’ve had in a while, though, and I only remember a fragment of it. It (they?) started at a beach with fine white sand, where some friends and I were running around underneath the summer sun. A low line of stores was just up from the beach, and the water was warm and inviting, with small waves. I remember wading in and being amazed at the clarity of the sea as I splashed around with my friends. Then my best friend appeared, and I decided to race him to the other side of the bay (it became a crescent-shaped bay not unlike the one at Nice). So I took off, freestyle, with my friends in tow. But my best friend was cheating, swimming slightly underwater and upside-down, with a snorkel and flippers, and was moving very fast indeed. But a giant was flying above me as I swam, and lifted me out of the water and upward as we neared the other side of the bay, a steep-sloped hill that rose out of the water. The giant and I flew higher above the sea as we plunged headlong towards the side of the hill. Just as we were about to make impact, I noticed the end of the hill, the part extending into the ocean, was covered with giant cicadas, not making noise, just hemispheres of insect wings lying massive against the practically vertical slope. The giant released me, and I hurtled into the side of the hill, which had become a sheet of thick black fabric. The giant became one of the cicadas to my right, and folded himself up against the hill. I found an opening through the fabric and pushed my way through. I was inside the hill, a framework of black metal tubing with black fabric draped over it, with slits in the covering to introduce light. I made my way through over the black tubing, moving toward the center of the hill. There was a circle of rooms, not unlike chapels in the apse of a cathedral, surrounding a center platform made of industrial-textured metal. All kinds of animals were everywhere, cats, dogs, birds, and the tubing crisscrossed every line of sight. People stood in the rooms surrounding the center platform, talking like they were at a cocktail party. A beam of light projected a two-foot circle in the center of the platform, and food would appear there occasionally, only to be eaten swiftly by the main duck. I circled the room about twice on the network of tubing before stepping onto the platform. Whenever I would approach the food, the duck would lunge at me protectively, jumping up and hitting my chin with the top of his beak. It didn’t hurt; it was more funny than anything, but I wasn’t hungry, so I backed off and joined a cluster of people in one of the rooms, observing the duck. I heard one of the people mention offhand that the duck was scared to death of Flora. Somehow I knew that if the duck wandered away from the circle of light for too long, a little white dog named Flora would terrorize it. By and by, the duck did venture away from the platform for too long, and Flora bounded out of the black tubing towards the duck, which was petrified with fear and remained frozen while Flora ran around it, heckling it…

Time to eat.