The universe is a huge cylindrical can, two-thirds full of dirt and rocks. Like an hourglass without the pinch. In this universe, I'm watching a film, a documentary on the history of life here. A line of ducklings on a pond, each totally different (one is the infant Daffy Duck) represent all the forms and generations of life, all following a huge mother duck. The last duckling suddenly disappears, leaving only a ring of ripples on the water's face. The next is pulled under. The next. Never see what swallows them. Then Ma herself is snatched under! Several ducklings under her wings go on in a straight line, though visibly terrified. One by one they're eaten. The last one knows what's going to happen, but what else can it do but paddle on?

Pop! Pulled under and devoured. Ripples. No one left.

The narrator says "Under each footstep you take is the forgotten consciousness of a once-living being; Earth's surface is made entirely of decomposed corpses."

In this grisly world, my sister Miriel and I are gulls by day. But we stalk the night as cat-cows, grazing the grassy plains near the Bay. (I've forgotten some big drama there; we feared a lion-bull, leader of our pride-herd... )

We hear of a storm, a hurricane coming. We flee toward high ground till we reach the very back of the container, as a tremendous, terrible wave bursts through the tapesty and floods the whole universe. Dirt and bones and all boil up into dark churning mass, each of us is lost, alone, flailing desperately to climb, to reach the top and breathe. I feel air at last and climb slowly out. As the new ground settles, and firms, I see it's the same 2/3 level as before, just rearranged. Few others survived the great extinction; my sister and my best friend are nowhere on the surface. They're strangling right now--or already crushed to death deeper down. I see a limp hand in one corner, extending from the earth; repelled, I hesitate to dig or pull up this probable coprse; debate with myself till the victim has surely choked, if it wasn't already dead.

And I wake, knowing the true horror of life in matter. And... of revolution.

WAKING NOTE

My dream echoes a frightful scene in Dan O'Neill's The Collective Unconscience of Odd Bodkins [sic]. An astral teacher shows Hugh and Fred (our two odd little bodkins) the real nature of evolution and revolution--they're caught in a gigantic hourglass of time, as it's turned over and over--revolution upon revolution! They die horribly. And must go on, as ghosts--through painful lesson after lesson...

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