A well timed joke, 

a well earned smoke, 

as I muse and meander through what is

and was

and may be...
where, on earth, am I?
a blue hall with faint blue doors?
a roiling saturation of blood-fresh red?
a cut down tree, glowing violet at the heart?
     

Prison Dream

I was in prison, needing to escape, for what I'm not sure. Another inmate decides to help me by smuggling me out in the van. All I had to do was lay down on the middle seat and cover up with a stiff coat while she drove out through the gated guard station. She slipped the van right around the security arm, and then I was free. I don't remember getting out of the van, but suddenly I'm standing outside the prison, which now looks like a multi-storied office building, and it is raining. I think, I have to get back in there, so I run back into the complex, around the same security arm I just rode through, slipping in the sandy mud that hinders my steps. Poussey and Taystee are at the guard shack. watching me run back in, looking at me in confusion and, possibly, disgust. 

A dream

  Christopher was four or so. He was sitting on my lap, facing me, his hands in mine. I am bouncing and jostling him while nearby adults prattle in conversation. He leans forward, touching his forehead to mine, and he says "Our heads are different coloured strait-jackets."

  Later in the dream, I am sitting at a long, rectangular dining table with a white tablecloth laid out. I am recounting to the same adults from earlier what said the child. 

My Waking Dream

The dress was late. It should have been here by now, so I'm wearing just my underclothes, but there are people all around—
  "Is this confidence?" she asked. "No, it's just too hot in here."—

I'm clutching a bunch of  aubergine, golf-ball sized fruits on long stems. I can feel their weight as they bob and sway with my movements. I'm supposed to address the crowd, but the shame of the missing dress is too much, and I begin to cry. 

You ran down stairs to get me, and then we were out in the crisp and clean and cold night. I remember the moon in Your eyes.

I dropped the fruits back there, and I can see their stain on the path behind me. Flickering lights make me turn. Something is shining, white and blue with pale green at the edges, but it is too bright to see who or what. But we are neither of us afraid. 

The light gellifies, and begins to blob around (gegenuber).

I hear You cry out.

Strange Snippet

  I was just a little girl, four or five. I was on a neighborhood street, on a sidewalk. The street ended in a 'T' intersection, and from the left came a horse, huge and muscular, golden and brown, galloping towards us. It leaped into the air and rose up in a sharp angle—thirty, forty, fifty, eighty, feet high. It was hovering over us, and then suddenly began its dreadful descent, back towards the street at a sickening speed. We crouched behind a car, peeking around the rear bumper. The horse slammed onto the ground—the impact rolling the earth in stuttering waves—and exploded, wetly, on the pavement, bits of flesh and gore shooting out around us. 

  This came after beginning Ignite the Genius Within, a book that, as evident from the title, is supposed to help one regain their creative spark. The book is full of pictures and prompts to focus your attention on feelings, memories, perceptions. After having this dream, I began to think that the horse from the dream came from the book, as I am not prone to dreaming or thinking about horses unless I have been exposed to one. Sure enough, when I revisited the pages I had read the day before, there was a picture of a horse, running down the beach— mane whipping and waves breaking— as if coming from the left side of the scene. On the opposite page was a picture of Earth, taken from space. 

  Going through the book the first time, I had thought about how many horses there must be in the world, on that planet pictured. The prompt suggests you "find yourself" in that picture, and think about vastness, perspective. It does seem strange, uncanny, unreal, to look at the Earth image and think that somehow, I am there in that image.