#6 07.15.09: I dreamt a referee

He had lived this pinstriped dream since childhood. He had paid his dues and now he was finally on top. Beginning with pee-wee games when he was just five, doing high school games at the age of ten and finally moving to the NCAA when a sophomore in high school. But he had finally made it, he was in the bigs. He would be the next Ed Hocuouly, but ten times bigger and ten times flashier. He was a referee.

As his dreams grew exponentially so did his flare. As soon as he could, he upgraded from a Camry LE to the Camry XLE. He began to have his whistles specially minted; first gold and platinum plating, then came different shapes, initials, insignia, hollow mystical beings, chalices, the latest and greatest being a 20 whistle gold plated set shaped like.308 Caliber Ak47 bullets. He carried them in a black and white bandolier across his chest. When he made an amazing call, he tore the tip from the cartridge and tossed the shell into the crowd to perhaps not thunderous applause, but applause nonetheless.

Things started to get out of hand when, one day, he realized he was getting no fulfillment from this dream come true. He stopped caring. Though it tore him up inside he’d finish the night with two beers instead of his usual one. He began driving through yellow lights. For a while he was able to play the game, taking risks, but reconciling himself to wake up earlier to make up for it. But then his calls began to lose their whip crack. His hand signals once had the tight corners of a military bed sheet, of late they had just sort of been there, like him, floating. He was off kilter and off the wagon. He needed help. He, his Gods and Devils incarnate were what he wore on his chest, were his actions, were his possessions. He once lived by rules and rules alone but they no longer carried any bearing on his life path. He felt compelled to search for his true calling and it scared the shit out of him because he had thought it was officiating. He bought more beer, bought more things, amplified his antics, but to no avail. Someone remarked once that he should find try Buddhism. He knew not what he sought but he sought and, finding nothing, he continued to falter and would continue his search. He wandered up and down the court, day in and day out, looking for shelter, wishing something would just pop into existence, something real, something tangible as the diamond encrusted whistle he wore to bed; he wished he could fall asleep and the next day it would be lying there next to him huddled in his palm, glaring, shining and neon “the answer.”

On the morning of what he called, “The Ultimate Experience” he lay in bed wearing a notch in his pillow and loathing self. He watched his ceiling covered in stars that were the glitter reflected off the crags in the new fangled asbestos. It was four o’clock in the afternoon. It was zero hour. He had lost the will to live, but he didn’t even have the will to take is own life, but he wrenched himself from the rut in his pillow, showered, toweled off, shaved, brushed and slid his fresh striped jersey over his empty shell of a body. As usual he took the same route to the arena. As usual he went through the rituals of the day. The game started as usual, for thirty minutes it played as usual, the jump ball had become a memory that would be forgotten at any moment and his heart began to beat irregularly. He wondered the cause since he was rigid in hsi nutrition and workout regimen. Despite it all, he grew light headed, nauseous, his vision began to close around the center, the periphery filled with stars. He knew what was going to happen and he fought his bodies urged to faint. His last glimpse was a coach throwing a fit. Suddenly, aware of it only for a moment, he dropped to the court having convulsion.

He never woke up. But he persisted, in a vegetative state, none the wiser, happy enough. It wasn’t tangible, but he had attained absolute ecstasy.

           

            The young brave woke from his living nightmare laughing boisterously. Despite his laughter however, he found he had never been more frightened in his life. Both the small of his back and his brow were saturated with stale sweat—a telling detail which informed him the long duration of this living dream.

            It began as it ended, in a cold sweat. Three moons elapsed since the beginning of his vision quest. The clouds had dropped and it had begun to drizzle. He had been subsisting only on dried venison, rutted water and meditative guttural chants until he was overwhelmed by the urge to follow the neon lichen and move north. He followed them until he saw a cave of salal and fern which beckoned for him to enter. There he dozed off and, in and out of consciousness, he felt repeatedly transported from one time to another and back again. Finally he could sleep no longer for it was dusk and he felt a presence in his fist, as if he blood had pooled and his hand had fallen asleep. Rolling his head, a pendulum within the rut he had created during his nap, he glanced at his hand, suddenly noticing there not a blood thirsty palm but a plant: completely foreign, completely alien. During his preparation for this journey in search of his manhood he had catalogued within his mind all that the elders had taught of flora and fauna his own spirit and that of the great ones which came before him. This was a true mystery. Even more mysterious was his tongue’s insistence on tasting it. Like a salmon to a gill net it was soon flopping around in his mouth and quickly finished with quick death blows. Its after taste was like a noxious root. He knew not what to expect as he lay watching the stars accumulate through the membranes and breakages in his cave’s ceiling. He waited until he felt the sky was its dark as the raven and crawled from his shelter and began to walk, east this time. As he did so the tree and sky and fern and creature and forest floor were all illuminated, all connected to the threads which weaved his flesh to them like a great buckskin. It was hard to explain, but simply put it was vivid, it was real for the first time, no longer was it just a setting and a background it had become the protagonist, the colors were the brightest and most beautiful things he had ever seen, the arrangement was unheard of in its genius. When it felt right, he sat down and collected himself.

            He knew he must collect himself, for now would be the time when his spirit animal would reveal itself to him. His focus however was not outside of himself, it had moved from universal to internal which had wrapped around one another, had become a tight braid and a basket. Soon he was able to discern maps and schematics of the universe and existence within his mind though neither he nor his people would know of maps or schematics for another quarter century. The colors were electric though his only knowledge of electric was lightening. He saw space ships but described them as the hooves of white tails in constant motion. He was elated. He was besiged by this elation and needed a break. He wanted to close his eyes, but they were already closed.

Then came the vision which would alter his life forever. His mind imbued this vision of great worth, though he did not know why. His body was consumed by another, very slowly he was assimilated by a foreign pale body. It wore oddly weaved clothing from neither hide nor bark. It was segmented, raven and sun, raven and sun. He ran with herds of other men and dictated their motion. There was much he could not explain, which had not been a problem to this point in his journey, on the contrary, he had enjoyed such things thus far, nevertheless, as he was compelled to walk north, to enter his leafy shelter, to look at his palm, to consume the plant, to again walk through the night he was compelled to panic, he was conscious of all motions which in real life simply happened independent of consciousness. Shaking, nausea, his mind wild, sickened, verging hysteria, calling forth these reactions from within moments before they were to happen, he then began to laugh and laughed through the rest of the night uncontrollably but consciously assuming the role of this pale human or god or devil until dawn was upon him and beauty and harmony were again aligned with physical reactions, that is to say, outside of himself.

            He promised himself never tell anyone of this part of his vision. His spirit he said was dear hooves, though he knew it was the one called ‘referee.’ He relegated this dream to the back of his mind and soon learned not to dwell on it, only thinking of it during restless nights or times of boredom which, also, was yet to be invented. When he was old, had fought in many battles, sired many children there appeared white men. They offered their hands and offerings of trinkets but despite being the elder he could not focus, for his his living dream had again come to him. His sweat again had come to him. His panic again had come to him. He again was conscious of things before they happened. His old ragged body could not handle it again. He had to warn his people, but he fell into a fit of laughter, convulsing and rolling on the ground until again he had created a rut in the ground. There he died. There he was consumed again by the pale being. And in that pale being wearing a striped garment he would remain till the rest of eternity.

 

            It was at this moment he felt compelled to finish the song. At this same moment he was compelled, sensing this predestination seconds before this moment was to happen, that is to say a few moments ago, to fall to the floor in convulsions. Leaning back as if falling into nothing, he let himself drop. For infinitesimal moment he floated, nothing belonging to him touched the matte black floor; the guitar strap a halo, the guitar a conduit and Tesla coil he floated. He hit the ground solid, his wasted coils that were all that was left of the shoulder muscles once nourished and thick during a stint in the army hit as wet laundry on some distant river bank. Hitting the floor he began a fit, rolling, shaking enough to make one nauseous, it was orchestrated hysteria. The music dictated his movements, his thoughts dictated the music and his movements dictated his thoughts.  He could see the electricity flowing from thought to brain to nerves to fingers to strings through cord to pedals through the amplifier and into space. He thought in the tone and hue of the lichen growing on the northern faces of the trees which lined the forests seventy miles away. His spontaneous composition gave voice to spaceships as they might have mapped the universe. He knew this conduit to, as he put it, everything that ever was and will be had a catalyst; it was mold synthesized into drops he found in his dressing room with which he lased his bandana. He didn’t know if what was inside him was God, Human or Devil. He was himself, he was someone else, he was the universe. Tommorrow he would go on a bender, vomit in his sleep and die a legend.