Sanity or Reality?

          The night was dark, cool and not too cool. The perfect summer night to sleep under the stars. The new moon shinning behind my back, I hope it brings me luck. The old ways speak much of suck charms and spells. Unfortunately delay in such thoughts will only make me more likely to be caught. I must escape this place and have been planning for months. A small bag of food and clothing should be enough that I can get to the house I see in my sleep. I just hope the place is not just a figment of my imagination. I have seen the house and how to get there so often in my sleep that I don’t know what is real any more. I must be going crazy, here I am at midnight duct taping a flashlight to a bike in order to be able to see to ride tonight. The plan is simple just leave and never look back. Implementing this on the other hand will defiantly prove more difficult. Not daring to turn on the light in case I would be seen, I leave the only home I have ever known in hopes of finding the place in my dreams. Rounding the bend in the old dirt road, I doubt myself again. Can leaving be this simple? Unlatching the back gate as I had done so many times before I hope the squeak of the rusty old hinges does not stir anyone. Which would be amazing considering I am now half a mile from the main house. Perhaps it is the people whose patterns I don’t know that I am most afraid of. Still not daring to turn on the light I ride past my neighbor’s house looking for where the back road turns into my grandmother’s driveway. I want the road just past it. Hopefully no one else is up. I have never spoken to those neighbors and they would undoubtedly not understand my plight. Every rustle of leaves, every animal stirring, and every sound from all around me makes me jump. All I want is to get away from him and to that house in my dreams.

            Life would be so easy if I would just turn around and go back, I know exactly what waits behind me and nothing about what is in front of me. I need to put as many miles between me and the place I come from as possible to night. That way when I am discovered missing the cops will have the wrong search radius. If I ride strong and hard I should be able to make twenty miles by daybreak. I have been training up for this for the last three months. Riding as far in one direction as I can then turning around and seeing if I can make it home before I drop. Home, such a funny word, if home is where the heart is then I have been living in the wrong place for all too many years. The house in my dreams is where my heart lays. Now for the most risky part yet of this journey, passing my neighbors house and not getting caught. Helpful that they don’t know that they are to be looking for me. Now, should I ride quickly past, or slowly and silently? It all depends really on whether or not they have a motion sensor light. God I hate those things. You can be the most silent person on the planet and still a dam light goes off. Which is far more obvious than any twig snapping. I should just go back home, but sneaking back in can be far more dangerous. On the inside I know where everyone is by sound, on the outside, someone could have moved about the house and I would be caught due to not knowing where they had moved to. I would be beaten for sure if I was caught sneaking back in. I can just here him saying “where did you think you were going, were you out with a boy, are you disgracing this family again?” a boy, ha! Why would I spend time with a boy? Worthless creatures, all they do is poke a girl, get her pregnant, and then beat her for not doing every little thing they could possibly want. I never want to be with a boy.

            How long have I been standing here? This is not good. If I am to get out of here I need to pay more attention, and make a decision! To walk quietly, or ride swiftly. I am letting my fear get the better of me, I should just ride quickly. Running scared is a lot faster than running mad, so I should be able to put this fear to good work and ride quickly. The gravel crunching under my wheels must be loud enough to wake the dead, but that must be because I am focusing on the sound I am making rather than the sounds of my environment. After I am on the main road I will switch the light on, for now I just need to hope I don’t hit anything. Ironic that I want the light when I can’t use it, and plan to use it when I don’t need it.

            I know these roads, I have ridden all the ones around me so that I know them in daylight and darkness. Most of the ones that are out past about forty miles I know from my dreams. I have been shown every detail between me and where I need to go so that hopefully I won’t become lost. Though this journey might just be one of those of self discovery in which I need to learn that the place I am looking for is only in my heart or some such shit. In which case I am completely screwed because what child has any skills in which legitimate money can be made. I can’t go back now, so I need to go forward. My worst fear is some idiot cop picking me up and taking me back home. They would never understand what goes on there, but hopefully that is behind me and I need not think about any of it ever again.

            Why am I so apprehensive about this, if I was doing the right thing then shouldn’t I feel better about this trip, or is this why people just stay in their ruts and refuse to move. I don’t like this feeling, like I am doing something horribly and in explicitly wrong. Which maybe I am, but I can’t go back now. Perhaps this is why I am so unsure of myself. Burning a bridge before I have reached sight of the other side seems completely ridiculous, yet here I am. Lighting that bridge before I even know that there is land on the other side. Of course there must be land on the other side, people don’t just put up a bridge that ends in the middle of the ocean or something, but that is not the point. How far have I gone, oh yeah the light, I don’t want to get hit out here. Usually by this point I am beginning to feel tired, but I guess when you have more initiative, than just riding for a work out, you tend to go farther.  Once dawn hits I won’t need to worry about this light, or being picked up by the cops till tomorrow, so tonight I need to find a place to camp. I was shown a good place and I brought some paint to change the color on my bike and other clothes. I should probably even cut my hair if I can do so without it being obvious that I cut it after all I have no skill in hair nor have I ever tried to cut it on my own.

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            The place I have been looking for is right in front of me. The gentle sloping hills covered with fruit bearing trees, the sweet sent of cherries in the air, the sky is the bluest I have ever seen and there is not a cloud in the sky. The perfectly manicured walkway under my feet is so steep I can’t ride my bike on, and it seems wrong somehow to even try. The snow caped mountains to my left are in breathtaking clarity. Everything seems too perfect somehow. The birds are singing the sweetest melody I have ever heard, and yet I am almost too anxious to continue. The high walls and gilded wooden gate barely coming into view are both a sight for sore eyes and the worst thing to face yet. If the place I see so vividly I my mind is real, how did I know of it, or did I just travel around till I found something that looked fairly similar. Still, I haven’t eaten in days and should probably see if anyone lives here, if they do I can ask them if I can eat some of their cherries before going on my way. No matter how hungry I am I will not steal food. Some things are just wrong no matter what the situation, and it is obvious that someone lives here; manicured orchards and well kept driveways don’t just happen. Well the only thing left to do is walk up there and find someone to ask about the cherries. Still the gate is so far up there and I am really tired. If I take a nap before continuing then I might not get there till after dark, then there would be no one around to ask for food.

            The day is warmer than I first thought, and this hill is no longer gently sloping. The hill is almost too hard to walk up the slope is too steep. The fruit on the trees is looking more tempting then ever. Why am I so concerned with asking permission to eat some fruit? No one would notice if just a few pieces went missing. Besides I am really hungry and I might never get to the gate at the top of this hill or mountain at this rate.

            Only a little ways farther, I feel like I am walking almost vertical, but I know that is impossible. Still there have been quite a few impossible things I have faced on this journey. What is one more thing before I decide what to do? Why does it seem like the more I think about the fruit, the farther away that gate becomes, and the steeper the slope. Maybe this is some kind of test, if I just stop thinking about food all together then I would be at the gate in no time. Still I don’t know how thoughts can affect reality. The entire idea seems ridiculous to me.

            Why does this gate look fake, like some kind of toy or movie set piece relocated here so that they wouldn’t need to pay for storage or something? Maybe this is a movie set I stumbled on, but that would be ridiculous, why would they use actual fruit trees when fake ones behave so mush better. There aren’t even hinges on the gate, what is the point of having a gate if it can’t be used. That would be a good trick for a castle though. Have everything set up so that people think you have a drawbridge and instead you have some wood placed in front of stone. Add some smaller man doors around the sides of the castle so that people can get in and out, which means that there must be another entrance to this place, most likely to the side of this fake gate. Judging from the change in the stone work, that to the right should be the door. If they have a fake gate made of wood, then they probably have a fake stone portion of the wall which is actually a door. Odd people, and rather confusing in a completely logical manor.

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            Why I believe? Ever since I got here I have been asked one difficult question after another. They say that I can’t leave till I have been enlightened; I still don’t even know what that means. I don’t even know how long I have been here. I find it almost impossible to keep track of time and have almost given up, perhaps I should keep track of years though. Knowing how many years seems important somehow, but I am not sure of how, or to whom. So many things seem that way. I have forgotten much of my old life, and spend most of each day in different forms of meditation, maybe this is enlightenment. Forgetting all of the life before I came here and just knowing the simply joy and mystery to these questions and meditations. I have spent three days so far coming up with why I believe and more importantly what I believe in, because it seems impossible to believe but not in any one particular thing. Though I was told not to list off what I believe only that I believe and why, this is to be some kind of special speech I make for the coming of winter dinner. Giving the speech is to be some kind of high honor, but I am not so sure. I think it is some way of testing my mentor as to what I have been learning and how far I have progressed. I have only one more day to think up why I believe and whether or not it is important to believe in any thing particular. Some of the other kids are complaining about their questions, and others are trying to get help by holding discussions about their question. No one knows my question, because I don’t want them to know. I want to come up with my answer all on my own and not let anyone tell me how to phrase things differently. Why does everyone here seem to be better at these questions than I am?

            Everyone is better than me and not just in the questions. I am so dam clumsy in my training; I keep falling on the jumps. I will never be as graceful as all the others. My legs are sore from the stance I need to hold for the exercise, and my back is sore from all the punching and arm movements. They won’t let me spar with anyone, saying that I can do such things when I am better trained or I will hurt myself. When we practice kata I am always facing the wrong direction and doing the wrong thing. Everyone else is perfectly synchronized and I am the one who is lost. There are so many kata and each one is so different it is hard to remember where I am moving and what I am to be doing. The master says that this will all come with time, but I am tired of looking foolish in front of everyone, and I know everyone is starting to get ticked off at me that I can’t keep up with them. The way they look at me with almost constant disapproval. I just wish I was better at all these forms of training.

            Still this place is far better than where I was before. There is food here, heat during the winter, and enough clothing to stay warm during cold weather. I am grateful for these things. I sort of wonder what happened when I left. How did my parents take it when I just up and left? There is no contact with the outside world here, so I have no idea if they even tried to look for me let alone want me back. I guess it doesn’t really matter, I am not going back, this place is not without its demands and stress but, at least I feel safe.

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            Standing up in front of everyone like this always makes me nervous. My mentor said that my answer to, why I believe, was so good that I should not be afraid during my speech. Still the grand meeting hall, packed with all the people who live in this wondrous place, the ancient looking walls, and high vaulted sealing are quite intimidating, especially when everyone is interested in what I have to say and to pick apart my arguments on something as intimate as why I believe. Well I hope this isn’t too bad, so here goes nothing. 

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           Then I wake and realize that it was all just a dream. A dream of a better, kinder, and more fulfilling life but  a life that I realize is no longer an option in today's society and I feel deeply that something has been lost to this world.