Polar Bear

February 17th, 2004

I’m in snow, and it’s a little dark - grey-skied. It’s somewhere in the Arctics, Alaska, or some other snowy place - and it wasn’t necessarily freezing cold, either...

A small group of at least five teachers - I can’t remember if I knew them or not - where commenting on how the polar bear I’d found was my soul buddy, and only mine. As the people commented, they retold the story of how I’d come upon saving/finding it:

European poachers kidnap polar bears and (without actually doing anything with the bear!) they dump them helplessly in some other arctic location - leaving them stranded. The poacher would come by, find these stranded Polar Bears, would teach them to dig, and be mostly harmless.

I’d come upon this one particular bear and the bear and I suddenly became attached. Our souls experienced a sort of ‘kizmet’. We where destined to roam throughout our days together - and as the teachers mentioned this digging (while telling the story), I somehow communicate effortlessly with the bear, with movements and with my thoughts and heart(?), and suddenly he digs and digs and digs like a happy little boy in a sandbox - with huge furry, clawed paws instead of a shovel for scooping. The Bear appears while the teacher talks about it. Suddenly I’m playfully wrestling with Bear - feeling his claws - curled, sharp, but not actually hurting me. My environment becomes smoothed out - real looking, but more or less softened and slightly altered into a Final Fantasy-like format.

Some yards away, I see someone peek out from the dark trees that make up a never-ending wall against the white snow, and this person is pure animé, and as I go to her through the wall of dark fir trees with my bear, everything becomes like a very realistic video game. There're fresh, rolling fields of grass, the sky is blue…etc.

I meet up with three other kids younger than I - then I become their age - and we’re on a quest. I hop down from the base of a snowy hill - leading to a clearing where the snow and the grassy world are devided. I stop, having been told I need at least 10 dollars, and I go to my bear. He knows I need it, but somehow "tells" me that I can’t have his credit card, only cash - and I say, “That‘s okay - the money is alright, I don‘t need the card” and we still verbally stumble back and forth about the money - telling each other what we want to hear, but we still don’t understand. We finally repeat what we “said” and this time we understand each other and I hug my bear. I have to leave him here, to go out and find something or do something that would benefit Bear. If I don’t do this - he is not saved.

I hop onto the grass with the other kids, and we’re all animé/Final Fantasy-esque. The girl in the trio looks at me and asks if I have the money (three tiny little dots of white - feels cold like snow, but it holds like very soft foamy rubber in my hand... much like Dippin' Dots!), and I nod. I feel afraid that these three little dots in my hand could slip through my fingers carelessly, or I would need my hand to hold onto something in which case I'd drop them and all was lost.

A few minutes after we struck out on the path unfolding in front of us, it forks into two paths and I forget to be afraid about the little white dots. I’m confident, and they’re safely held (rolling around) in my closed fist. The path on the left leads to an spanish villa, and the one on the right heads to town and the rest of the “animé” world. To find this out, I turned left, first, and walked towards the villa thinking it could lead to the village just beyond the house - then I’m pulled back by one of the kids and we all start off towards the town, along the right path.

We all have necklaces with a little diamond hanging on the end. It represents some power us four have, that others do not. As I notice that we have these, I look up to find two of my new friends high up in the air! They were just walking away from the path, across the grass, towards a small town wall made of brick and topped with little black pointy spires. I walk along the grass only to find it’s so soft that it bounces under my feet like rubber! I’m floating up as the others are landing, and they bounce their way to the wall, and over it. I try to catch up and end up landing on the wall, my feet on either side of a spire, and I call out excitedly, and we all start walking towards the next wall. To cross over this wall, we have to jump again, only higher. This wall is the hardest to get over - and we all know it. With the dots safe in my hand, and my confidence high, I jump after the kids. They make it over and I land on the wall - again. Only this time, as I jump, I’m outside of my body - looking down at my self - and notice that as I’m about to land (in a VERY low crouching position), my necklace gets caught around a sharp spire. I’m landed, but as I try to stand up slowly, so as to unwrap my necklace from the rounded spike as I stand erect - I feel, hear and see the necklace break. My heart shatters. I couldn’t use the hand with the dots in it, they had to be kept safe, and my left hand was busy holding a spire to keep me from falling backwards - and the kids couldn’t help either, they were on the other side of a large and well-sunlit alleyway - on a wall across from mine, encouraging me to jump.

It was all over. I’d failed.

In an instant, I fumbled with my footing and slipped back - then opened my right hand - only a little - and slightly slipped my hand around the spire to my right, and the dots slipped out and fell. I was defeated. Feeling so absolutely sad and helpless - I wailed. It was all there was left to do, and instead of trying to reason with myself - I let myself wail. I had not only lost my quest, but something about it had made me lose all chance of ever saving my bear. Though he wasn’t in any peril, I'd had something to do for him, and if I didn’t accomplish it, something would be wrong or incomplete - and suddenly I’d failed, leaving that something wrong, and incomplete.

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...When I woke from this dream, I found my hands under my pillow - the left one was gripping the underside of the pillow, and the right one was in a fist - still holding for the dots.