Y'know those times when you get like 4 hours of sleep and wake up at the witching hour but you feel wide awake and rested and you don't think going back to sleep is a good idea because your alarms are set to get up again in just a couple hours and going back to sleep will mean the wrong amount of sleep so you'll be groggy and cranky all day no matter what you do -- so you just get up and make a cuppa tea and light some candles to start your day in the hours before dawn? Okay maybe you don't, maybe that's just a me thing. but it's a thing that happens with me and today was one of those mornings. But it's good I gave me some introvert recharge hours to myself to reflect and meditate (this morning my thoughts were on the plasticity of human consciousness and the truth that the more times you listen to the same lie the deeper you come to believe it EVEN IF there is no actual proof beyond the repetitions -- repetition is the key to change most people's moral codes and belief systems, not truths) and wake up before having to be at my parents house at 7:45 and then all day with people before I can have any introvert time again. My mom tried to tell me again recently that I wasn't always such an introvert, that it's gotten worse because I used to be more sociable as a child -- at which point I asked her, "Don't you remember all the times I'd run away and no one could find me because I was hiding in a closet or the space under a set of stairs or behind all the coats or in the rooms where the pets were locked away from the guests? Don't you remember how before I could even walk, I would crawl away from the party when you had people over to go hide under a table to sleep so you always had to look under tables to find me? Don't you remember all the times where I'd stand up with no warning and blurt out that I was going to go outside to play and you'd find me alone in the woods or by the lake talking to ducks or in a garden talking to the flowers or hiding up a tree with a book -- and I wouldn't come back until the sun started to set or everyone came shouting looking for me? Don't you remember all the times in middle school and high school you called me anti social because after dinner I preferred to be alone in my room than downstairs watching TV with everyone else? I've always been an introvert -- you just never noticed because I was polite and curious and talked to the adults for a bit before I'd get overwhelmed and run away."  She was just like, "O right. You have always done those things...." 

Anyway. This morning I woke up so suddenly from a vision dream with the polar bear in it. Or maybe it was the cat woke me up. Or both. But the dream stuck with me. So, there was thick turquoise glacial ice across the cave/path opening between me and the bear and it was constantly thickening like the slow accumulating growth of glaciers and he didn't even notice or care because he was distracted trying to catch all these illusory fish that kept sliding through his paws that were siren singing how they were great big seals but when you looked at them with true sight they were less than minnows or sprats and that's why they kept sliding away between his paws no matter how many he caught...... And finally I decided to stop waiting because I was tired of waiting and being ignored and it was cold and growing darker and I was hungry. Only there was no food right on my side of the ice except I could see further up the path was a berry bush so I turned away from the ice and the bear it was starting to obscure to leave. the polar bear saw me turning away to leave and came running over upset he only just realized the glacial ice had grown between us, started scratching attacking at the ice that had built up with such a furious intensity like he'd gone mad now that he'd noticed it was forming there. I just watched the frenzy of his attacking the ice and I did nothing, because after all he was the one who let the glacier form between us, that was what he'd chosen and wanted right up until the moment I turned to leave. Finally he stopped when I turned once more to head away down the path open to me and he gave one really loud bellowing roar of so much hurt that I startled and stopped in my tracks at the pain in his voice over that glacial ice and me walking away. So I looked back over my shoulder at the noise and he was just sat there unmoving,  looking so sad and defeated hanging his head against his chest.... And that pulled at my heart in a way that all that fury at the results of his own choices hadn't so I turned back toward him once more to at least give a proper farewell instead of just disappearing and I walked back over to the glacier ice that was already reforming around the scars of all those deep claw gouges. And I put my hand up against the ice at heart height and said, "O silly bear. I never wanted this either. But what did you think would happen given the choices you made with all those distractions? You'll have to find another way around and hope it crosses my path somewhere ahead." And he heaved a big heavy sigh and a tear slid out his eye and the bear put his paw on the exact spot on the other side of the ice where my hand was. And then we both leaned into our hands for just a moment, but a long moment because it was before I thought I was turning to go again and I didn't know when I'd see him next but my side of the ice had no food and I had to go find some. And just before I removed my hand to leave, the ice cracked radially, in a spiral pattern from where our palms were and then from the outer curve of the spiral it had rays like sunbeams beyond the spiral. And the whole wall of ice from the glacial formation shattered and when it did the inside of my left forearm got scratched near the elbow by the falling ice as it exploded along those cracks. And I saw the bear start to come rushing through the hole even as the ice was starting to drip threatening to re form. Just then I glanced away down at my bleeding left arm and open palm -- and then I woke up to my cat jumping right up on the bed next to my head staring into my eyes and chirping, "Mryeowl?" And then when I said, "Hey Spock. I was having a vision dream and don't know how it ends. I don't know if the bear made it through to reach me on my side or not." he decided to try to walk over me to lay on my chest but he slipped on the curve of my shoulder where the collarbone is and tried to catch himself but slid more on the curve of my arm and ended up scratching my left arm with his hind claws exactly where I still felt the phantom wound from the ice cutting me when it shattered.... When I checked my arm, there were no visible marks and the cat didn't break the skin when his hind legs slipped like that, but it still FEELS like it's been torn open and is healing up the cuts....

Anyway. I'm up and dressed and ready and breakfasted on some bread and butter (which I shared with the animals) and now I'm just sitting around drinking coffee wondering how the dream ends and contemplating what it means and when it means -- does it mean now or in the future? And is that near future or far future? Or is it already too late for breaking that glacial ice so now the bear will have to find the long way round? Is it promise or warning or what's going on in the deeps under the surface where even I can't see it? I don't know... Vision dreams exist somewhere beyond and outside normal flow of time, somewhere in the unending long now. They always do.... I think I'm going to read the next comic in Endless Nights to distract me from my overthinking and contemplating and questions I can't (yet) answer. I'm not letting me read more than one in a sitting because some of them are new to me first reads to savor and these are the last last until I do another re-read of all of The Sandman graphic novels.

I hope the snow stays. It's supposed to warm up to almost 40 the next couple days and then rain for a few days turning to mixed precipitation then snow. I'd rather it just stayed snow..... Everything is brighter and more full of hope in my world when there's snow to tuck in all the resting trees and sleeping roots and seeds under the white blanket that protects them from the cold until Spring thaw. So I hope it shifts enough to get colder so we can keep the snow and all that promised precipitation next week will be snow and not the desultory blahs of drab December rains instead of bright sparkly snow.... It's December after all, colder and snow instead of rain, please and thank you.  It will keep me from getting restless and impulsive for sheer fractiousness at the lack of snow.