I am prone to powerful dreams, and I've been known to scare the nightlights out of myself in kicking awake. Still, there are dreams that kick you awake and there are dreams that land you ten feet across the room feeling like your skin just spun twice around your skeleton, gasping and goosebumping. What follows is of the latter variety. Interpretations are welcome, though you don't necessarily need to be a wind-talker.

I am recently fortunate to have made the acquaintance of a talented woman who carries the sobriquet of Heartgasm. I mention her because--in the gracefully unexpected manner of all synchronicty--her name provided me with a trigger with which to remember what happened when I found myself at Angel's Landing in Zion National Park, relaxing in a very comfortable rock seat on the edge of a severe precipice, sitting there with a thousand foot drop on three sides and a woefully steep incline behind. Examining the slope behind me, I couldn't imagine how I got myself into this position, let alone how I would get out of it without kissing the chasm, but I was comfortable for the moment. But the moments kept passing and the sun kept setting and the warm rock began to feel increasingly cold against my back and I gradually realized that this was not at all a sustainable position. I shivered first from cold and then from fear and soon I'm paralyzed as any attempt to move seems a certain fall but the longer I wait the more my body stiffens and shivers and I hear the smallest most feeble most helpless part of my existence whisper help and my paralyzed body becomes suddenly determined and my face snarls in defiance of death and I gently very carefully scramble around in my narrow rock seat precipice, turning myself around to tackle that slope behind but then I look up and twenty feet away looking down at me is a leopard. And it begins to approach, padding its way expertly down the slope and I've never seen such noble such graceful ferocity and I know that this is it that there's no way out and I'm about to die and I hear the echoes of my last words resounding through the chasm as I call out to those I have loved, wishing them to know that I will always love them and I turn back and night has fallen and the leopard is at my face but the spots on its coat are blinking like the eyes of awakening awareness and the leopard lies down before me and I'm astonished to hear it speak: I'M PRAYING FOR YOU, the leopard says, basso profundo enormous reverberation and its fur shines golden divine shining illumination and my throat chokes oh my god as my heart bursts enormous and my hand reaches forth and my fingers slide into the silken fur of the scruff of its purring neck as I… Awaken.

Untame your wild,

Tony Vigorito
www.tonyvigorito.com