A dream

Torrid heat and the smell of the road dust.

“Have you been to that glade? Noticed that special fragrance there?”
“Yes, there was some unusual smell there, but I can’t recall it”
“Well, you can try. I collected all these grasses and flowers to make it easier to you. Look, how they are fine!”

I am trying to recall the glade and the smell which was there. Nothing comes out. I watch the herbs she gathered for me. I touch them; I take them with my hands. I examine them, I smell them, and I taste them. Here are yellow inflorescences of tansy. Here are green-bluish mints. Here are whitish-green wormwoods. Here are pink umbrellas of mil-foil. Here are willow weed leaves.

I take a willow weed and roll its leaves; I rumple a tansy’s yellow button and a sprig of wormwood. Rich viscid smells mix and join together into a slow flow and pick me up. I flow above the syrupy river of aroma and it brings me somewhere on its own power.

The bottom of the river is covered with brightly colored pebbles. It is a wood path and the Sun sparkles on the pebbles. I see a high fence along the path. Here is a passageway. I stop at the boundary.

Here the glade is! Now I can recognize that intoxicating fragrance. It is mysterious! I am delighted; I am embraced with ecstasy. And I step towards the call.

Cool breeze picks me up and carries me forth. It gets gloomy and cold. Some kind of numbness seizes me. An unknown, insuperable force pushes me to the glade, to that cool gloom; forth, forth, forth to unknown nowhere!
And only a far voice calls: “Get back! Get back!” Numbness, no power to turn round. The night breeze carries me forth and forth towards a black sucking down rotating crater.

“Please, stop! Come back!” And this desperate call pulls me out of the gloom of uncertainty.

Torrid heat and the smell of the road dust – this is all that remained.