This week, 33 years ago, I started wearing out my first pair of iron shoes on my very first journey. This week, 6 years ago, I came home after wearing them out.  And 7 lucky years ago this very week, I had the dream that sent me to the 10th kingdom past the thrice-ninth tsardom.

Seven years ago, I lived impatiently in the faded palette of the desert, where we were inhabiting that stretch and yawn  of time and space that seems endless and pointless, but is, in fact, preparing one for the Next Big Thing.  The dry lightning there was beautiful, and we'd watch it circle the city from the fields behind our apartment, and I'd wonder if that was what was left, if all the magic had left me and if the rest of my life would be as colourless and comfortable as a rock bleached  by the sun.

Then I had a dream. 

I was invigorated and rushed, tearing hell bent for leather in the rain, carrying a briefcase and bags on the streets of a tidy wet town I had never seen.  There was a river, and white bridges, and official buildings.  Something in my mind said "like DC, but not DC; this is not anywhere you have ever been, but you'd better hurry up."  A young blonde girl, a teen, was directing me, telling me we'd be late, that we were expected, that everyone was waiting to meet us. I remember trying to categorize her as someone I knew .  I superimposed the face of every blonde girl I'd met, the way you do in dreams, but all the faces of children I'd had as playmates, as charges, as classmates and colleagues just slid away from her voiuce and her manner to reveal a slim, professional stranger.

The rain itself was notable in that I hadn't seen a slow steady rain for about two years, and in the dream, it was real enough to taste.  And it didn't taste like desert sage, not even a little bit. 

Suddenly we were there, at the marble steps and imposing door of our destination.  The girl ushered me in with a flick of her umbrella and the click of a cell phone snapping shut..  Then she led me up the oddest set of steps I'd never seen.  It was as if an old and noble, but decayed, building had been dressed up in modern drag.  You knew there was old moulding underneath the light blond wainscotting, that plaster crumbled underneath the bright cheap mirrors, and the red carpet everywhere, what was that?

Dashing up the marble carpeted stairs, hauling my bags along the pale wooden banister, I was suddenly seized witha single panicked thought.  Where on earth would I change from boots to shoes?  But there was no stopping now to change on the stairs spiralling up to the door.  No time to wonder where that light above the stairwell on my right was coming from- no time to do anything but open that door, in a pair of boots I didn't yet own, to greet a smiling man with silver hair and silver glassesthat I didn't know, and his friend who was neither Asian nor European in appearance, but both.

They both grasped my hand warmly, and pointed behind them to another set of stairs, which lead to a room where I could change from boots into shoes if I liked. I am so relieved that I'm tingling.  All is right with the world.  The worst is over.  They welcomed me, and I know where the coatroom is.

I woke up, muttering, "but I don't even have any boots". 

10:16:21 PM