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Note: Lizard City is a frequently visited location in the Landotter's dream space. Picture a bustling, post-war mid-western American metropolis circa 1956. Industry! Progress! Thrift! And so on. There are no slums, everything is clean, shiny. The cars are large and finned. There are factories, schools, white churches, department stores. The downtown core is skyscrapered and gleaming. This is where my apartment building is. You will find my apartment on the 53rd floor. I go to sleep here, Earth-side, just like y'all do any night... and wake up in my apartment in Lizard City. I know I've awakened in Lizard City, because the bed I wake up in is a large oval stone dish filled with oily, dark fluid that drips cleanly off my body leaving no trace. And of course, as soon as I step outside, I find that every single inhabitant of Lizard City is, yes, you guessed it, a lizard. Large, humanoid, bipedal lizards. Lizards in pin-striped suits and derby hats. Lady lizards in bright floral print dresses and pill-box hats pushing prams with baby lizards hissing inside. This is Lizard City.
And I am the only human there. I often wonder whether the apartment is in fact some kind of time-share space, for sometimes I awaken to find other signs of human habitation. A hairbrush, f'rinstance... not needed if yer a lizard. Some discarded clothes, not my size. Lipstick. Playing cards. A hand-written note that says "get milk, eggs, anti-bacterial hand soap". A set of keys...
So, if any of this seems familiar to you, lemme know. We might be sharing some oneiric co-ordinates.
On to the dream, in which I find myself a tad less human than at other times...
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Once again I awaken to find myself in Lizard City. I get up from the bed and pass the large sheet of polished onyx that serves as a mirror. As I look at myself, I suffer a terrible shock. I am a lizard.
I had thought this would be a good thing, but now that I actually am a lizard, I know that it is profoundly wrong. I gape at my hands in horror... scaly, clawed appendages, so dark green as to be almost black. I cannot look at my face. The situation is intolerable.
This needs fixing. And fast. So I collect a few things, put together a pack of supplies and head out. Away from Lizard City.
What follows is one of those long epic dreams, the kind that seem to take in a cast of thousands and multiple overlapping adventures over great distances. It is a Journey on a grand scale and impossible to relate in it's entirety. Throughout it all I lament my lizard-ness and seek a remedy of all whom I meet.
The journey ends, however, when I find myself in a cavern. It is a long cavern in the Earth, miles long and wide, but not very high; the ceiling of the cavern is only about fifty feet above me where I stand. The spatial senses are easily fuddled here.
In this cavern I find gGod. He fills the entire space like a fractal, a fractal composed of all possible elements, organic and inorganic. He is animal, plant, mineral, machine, spirit... everything. He's damn hard to look at, as all the elements flow and twist through each other in endless permutations of the same Idea: creation. In short, gGod is one trippy looking bastard.
We engage in conversation, a conversation almost as long as the epic journey that preceded my arrival here. I cannot remember anything about this divine chat. Eventually, though, it came to a close and, like the djinn of old, the fractal gGod told me that I could have one wish. I wished to have my human form back and it was done...
But when I looked up from my pink little hands, gGod was nowhere to be seen. Or rather, the last rapidly modulating bits of Him could be seen filtering up through the solid rock ceiling. I felt rather uneasy at this...
I returned to Lizard City, where things appeared to be in a mild state of emergency. There was panic in the streets. Whole sections of the city had been closed off. I couldn't get back to my apartment. I approached an official-looking lizard...
"Excuse me, but what's going on here?"
"Some asshole let gGod out. He's been running all over the area, making one helluva mess."
"Somebody let gGod OUT?"
"Yeah, and it's a shame, cuz it took us ages to get Him into that cave. I mean, literally, AGES... you've no idea, fleshy."
(The lizards like to call me 'fleshy', y'see...)
"I think I might have some idea..." I sheepishly volunteer.
The lizard looks at me as realization dawns. "Aww, crap! Yer kidding right? You let Him out?!"
"Umm... sorta, I think."
The lizard fumes and begins to jot furiously on a clipboard. "This is comin' straight outta your salary, y'know..."
Funny. I didn't even know I had a job there!
In Lizard City.
-------------------- * * * * * * * * * * Read the Landotter's Mystical Journey Journal
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