16 August 2008

Where I get my ideas about sex

link to this | View all from photoblog »

Photo by Eric Francis.

SHORTLY AFTER I moved to a place called Vashon Island, I dreamed that a Bigfoot tribe lived in the woods around my apartment. I lived in the converted half of a garage, an extremely cute little space with a sliding glass back door leading to a healthy patch of woods. We lived toward the lesser-inhabited north side of an island off of Seattle. The main house was 20 steps away.

One distinguishing feature of the island was that it wasn’t connected to the mainland by a bridge. So it was very quiet.

It was a Friday night and I fell asleep unusually early; it was late summer and not long after the Sun had set. I fell out like I had was exhausted or had been drugged, but neither was true. And I had a most incredible dream.

It was as if the walls of the metal garage/apartment structure had turned transparent, and I could see that I was living in a forest inhabited by Bigfoot. There were five or so, large creatures covered in white fur; they were an albino tribe. I could see them, and feel them, as if I had been let into a deeper shade of space and time than the one I was accustomed to.

I knew they were aware of me, and could feel me become aware of them. This revealed the psychic resonance between us, a beautiful, unusual feeling to be so connected to something so different than myself. Then I must have drifted back to sleep.

When I awoke in the morning, I remembered the dream vividly, immediately upon awakening; and I could feel the residue of the empathy we shared for a moment. It did not occur to me that I would ever see them again. Yet it seemed unusually vivid for a dream. I’d had other dreams that felt like astral journeys or events; this one had that mark.

Because my work as an astrologer involves the use of symbols and archetypes, I considered the encrypted message of the dream, even though I knew it might be something a little more. Wherever they had originated, and as real as they had felt, the images of Bigfoot had come through my consciousness and I had perceived them.

The imagery occurred at a pivotal time in my life, when I had just arrived in a new home in a remote part of the country that I had never even visited.

The message seemed to be about primal consciousness, something that was welcoming me and that I was making friends with: feeling and experiencing something at the core of who I am, something normally perceived as legendary but revealed to be true.

As for the astral dimension, the idea that this other species of humans might coexist invisibly around our world, veiled only by the thinnest psychic cloak, felt astonishing and intriguing. I did not know what to make of the fact that they were all white in color rather than the usual gorilla-like color that Sasquatch is usually depicted or seen in. I later learned that in some Eastern legends he is depicted in white, and sometimes called Yeti.

The next night I fell asleep, despite barely being tired and feeling unusually clear in the cool night air of the Pacific Northwest. As I drifted off, I could feel our island surrounded by Puget Sound, our community of a few thousand people isolated on a 600-foot high mountaintop poking out of the sound, silent except for the movement of wind and water. Despite the presence of some people, they were safe here.

I slipped off to sleep into the feeling of a deeper awakening. I had never experienced anything like this, going from awakening conscious to a fully lucid dream. I didn’t dare move. I was in my bed but the walls of my apartment had again become transparent. The feeling was incredible enough, the sense of potential. I lay there breathing, aware of the space wide open around me in all directions. The shaggy white giants were scattered around me, and I could feel their curiosity. I was curious too, but to just go out there and greet them seemed unconscionable.

I could feel the glass door, a few feet from the foot of the bed; I merely had to get up and walk outside. I knew that I could, and I knew they could feel my ambivalence.

The next morning, vivid scenes of this new dream replayed, and I entered the day with a feeling of being transported beyond my own existence. Where, I could only feel, but the world seemed like a cosmos enchanted by the dimension just beyond it. I knew they were continuously there, though I could not perceive them. I sensed them aware of me at every step, but only gently. I wondered who else knew about them.

I could not wait to sleep that night. Fortunately I had a busy, enjoyable day planned, so I thought I could let go of thinking about it. I did not realize that my eagerness to go to sleep was the worldly equivalent of my succumbing to my curiosity that night.

I spent the day photographing a theatrical festival on the island, followed by a party, and finally at around 11 pm I went home. I fell asleep snug in my cottony bed, grateful that I was indoors on a cool autumn night.

I drifted out of normal awareness and was again lucid. The glass doors were now open and blowing a consistent, cool breeze. I knew that I would need to walk out into that to be out there, and somewhere I found the resolve in my heart to step out of bed.

I always slept nude and thought nothing of being nude among them. I walked out and felt the breeze push its refreshing movement into my face, my belly, my thighs. I stepped across a small lawn and toward the forest and when I crossed the woodline, they appeared, not suddenly but gradually, one at a time, in a now-vibrating forest. Every color was rich and defined, even in the darkness. I had different vision. My hearing was also different. I could hear every detail, every cracked twig and leaf under my feet on the forest floor.

They were everywhere. We seemed to hang suspended in mutual awareness of one another. Furtively, timidly, I glanced up and made eye contact. Mostly I could feel them and that was enough, but I craved looking into their eyes. The tone of their emotions was vulnerable and clearly human. Yet there was a wildness that came through in the form of simplicity. I could feel, when in that state, that it would be difficult to conjure language and that is why they were silent; silent but noticing everything and feeling one another. And now feeling me.

I knew what they wanted me to do, or rather, what they were encouraging me to want: to masturbate in that forest, in their presence. My desire, when I first resonated with it, felt alien and enticing, easy to yield to a little more. The desire itself felt good and I knew that I didn’t have to go all the way, I could just enjoy feeling the willingness to. Then it felt so good and I was squatting, and I found that I was masturbating openly in front of three of them.

Others gathered closer, but not too close; they gave me distance to feel, and what I could feel was a state of natural existence. I was aware of a burgeoning space of heat inside me that seemed poised to burst but only swelled larger and warmer. I slipped into the primal, worldless space of being and openly played with the feeling of wanting to orgasm. It felt natural, as did their approval. I reminded myself I was dreaming but felt ridiculous in the midst of how real this was.

We all knew what was going to happen. I wanted and needed to let go, yet the prospect of orgasm seemed so overwhelming, it would be so engulfing and cause me to let go of all of my fears; to get there I had to be fearless for a moment. And emotionally, it felt like I was about to give birth to something larger than myself.

Their empathy made it easy suddenly, and my body started to heave, followed by my voice, and then the energy of my pleasure rippled into the forest and the creatures that were around me. Their awareness embraced me. I invited myself surrender to this feeling of rippling, and I did, crying out in the all-consuming pleasure of ejaculating…so much, coursing in pulses of heat into my palm and then the thirst came over me.

I drank as if from a cup, gulping, still coming, ejaculating in sweet long pulses stronger and unlke anything I’d ever felt before, that I recognized were the pleasure contractions of my companions, they were all cumming, spilling their seed into the Earth as I drank mine.

I remember nothing more.

When I woke up, it was light and I was deep in my bed, and my mouth and face were thickly coated with semen, and some was streaked in my hair.

Commenting is closed for this article.