Tie Your Shoes

Jan. 3, 2008

Last night's toss-and-turn nocturnal adventure turned out to be a doozey. I hadn’t dreamed anything like this before.

I peeled off my skin and followed a man to a red hole. Loosing my shell made me lighter. I slipped inside and continued to follow the man. He began moving quickly through an orbital wind tunnel of sorts. He would turn and beckon with a devilish grin, leading me downward. The wind became cold and without my skin it made my whole body sting. I remember feeling the coldness in my bones—like they were freezing from the inside out. We continued down. I remember thinking I had a choice—like the lucid dreaming they hound about on Coast to Coast—I could follow in pain and curiosity or surrender with relief. My bones froze and became heavy. Each step was a stab to the soul. I chose to continue. My heart stopped pumping so I removed it from my chest and pumped it manually like a stress ball. Soon my eyes, scorched by the wind, fell out. My ears began picking up signals like a ham radio and bombarded my brain with millions of frequencies. I singled on one and listened as I continued down. The pain danced with the signal forming a new sensation. Outside of the dream world we're handicapped with 5 senses. This sense seemed to be tugging on my spinal cord sending synapses everywhere at once, both in my body and brain; a sensory explosion. My feet soon froze to the floor of the wind tunnel and the signal I picked up became clearer. It was the voice of the Devil. He was laughing. “You’d follow me anywhere,” he said, “even without a heart.” I lifted my heart in the air and continued to pump, to show the Devil it was still with me. The Devil laughed and lit it on fire. The burning felt like an overused ice pack and I continued to pump. I pumped faster, my forearm contracting beyond its physical ability. I pumped my blood throughout my body and began to feel warm again. My eyesight came back. The Devil stopped laughing and looked angry. The man who I followed through the red hole and assumed was the Devil approached the Devil from behind. He slipped a shoelace around the Devil’s neck and began to choke him. The Devil stopped breathing and dropped like a bag of sand. Before I could say anything the man bent over and re-laced his shoe. “Good things to have around,” he said while pulling at his laces. “You should tie your shoes more often.” Before he finished I was standing, fully skinned, above ground watching him descend down the red hole again, like I previously had. This time, I chose to tie my shoes instead.

I don’t know what any of it means. The funny thing is I never tie my shoes. It seems an odd way to get me to start doing it.

Miles Foreman
25