Dragons & Butterflies

I've become quite fond of the feeling I get from the painkillers. The smoothing of the rough or jagged edges, like the heel of a calloused foot, dry and cracked, sometimes painful, the weight and pressure put upon it stressing the surface, splitting the skin open, bleeding it.

The weight of my life right now, the pressure of emotion and thoughts bearing down. The surroundings I have created are barren and dry, stealing the moisture and suppleness from my feet. Each step forward I take, foretells another cracking and invites blood-letting. The opiute soothes and medicates, an illusionary moisturizer.

And what of the thoughts this opiute creates and float atop the consciousness of my mind rolling through plains and valleys, caverns and towering abysses? Are they real, or are they another mirage of my psyche, calling me to drink and rest in the shade and at the shores of its oasis? Am I really seeing me? Is it an accurate reflection and comprehension of the man inside, or the higher self?

Perhaps it's a circus funhouse. Passageways heaving up and down as I walk forward. Distortions in foiled glass that bends and shapes like frozen ripples in a pond, raising the shoreline and rolling the images that dance upon its placid surface. Tunnels and openings rolling around and around, trying to turn me over and batter me like a piece of uncooked fish before entering the deep fryer.

The maze of refractory and reflective images and light, all within my mind, getting lost inside. Running to escape, lost and confused, frantic and disoriented. Holding a candied apple impaled on a stick before me, eating it while I navigated through the reflections. The bright red coating glistens, like fresh blood. Biting into it, breaking the corpulent surface and sinking into the cool fleshiness. Sweet and wet. Crashing into a mirror, arrogant with confidence of my direction and geographic positioning, my teeth aching from the hard candied surface impacting against them.

How do I get out, how do I escape? Do I click my heels 3 times and wish for home? Are my shoes red as well, like the apple I devour? Is it simply a matter of wanting to awaken, or is the funhouse real? Representative of the psychological gauntlet I must conquer to be free?

Dragonslayers and clown cars.

Is there anyone, any adult who is not unnerved and disturbed to some degree by the bulbous, big footed, men who wear smiles on their faces, so large and unreal they look as though their mouths have been carved away? Floating heads on a band of cloth, amused by polka-dotted and propellered bow ties.

And what of the Dragons to be slain? Would they still be Dragons, projectile vomiting streams of ignitable gastric juices, if the skies they flew lay above countrysides of compassion and seas of forgiveness? Would this call them to land, to slough off their skins of scale, like serpents? Emblazoned in golden white light, their corporeal casings splitting open from tip to tail? Heaving up from its arrested coil of anger, sorrow, fear and resentment?

I don't know what form of beast or being would rise from such liberation and I say this without surprise. For I have never seen such metamorphosis to anticipate and celebrate its arrival.

If you saw them soaring and sailing though the air, rising to the heavens, swirling and spiraling, would they be Dragons in your eyes? Would they send shockwaves of fear and terror through your body, or call you to arms to defend your land? Or would they instead be creations of such magnificence, that your vocabulary would fail you, instead taking you to rely only upon the tears that would breach your lower lid cascading over your cheekbone as means of expression?

It would be so simple, would it not? Merely a different point of view, or perspective. The alchemy of Dragons to Butterflies as simply as choice.

This Dragon, would it also be the Dragon I am chasing? And those who chase Dragons, have they seen these Dragons they pursue, or is that why they give chase? Are they elusive and illusionary; alway out of our physical field of vision? And if so, which eye do we believe, our mind's eye, or the globes that rest within the sockets of our head? Which tells more truth? Do either tell the entire truth, or is truth like the alchemy of Dragons and Butterflies - creation and manifestation by choice?

Could you tame a Dragon, if it were to let you get close enough to stroke its underbelly, in the absence of one scale? Would this be the act of compassion, like the Mouse removing the thorn from the Lion's paw, that would free it from its emotional and karmic burden?

When love, acceptance and compassion reveal our missing scale, does it not tame us and free us from our burdens? When our soft, vulnerability is cared for and respected, does it not encourage us to let down our guard and remove our armour?

Would we also not strike out with vehemence and primality for self preservation when our vulnerability is sieged upon and attacked? Are we much different than Dragons? If we are not, then perhaps maybe we are Dragons. Dragons and Butterflies.

If there is a grain of truth in this, then perhaps the Dragon I am pursuing is me. If I stopped giving chase and sat down, right now, right in this moment, in this place I stand; panting for breath, my chest heaving, my legs aching and my heart pounding.

If I stopped, would the Dragon who is me find me? Would it turn round, double back, to see why the game has suddenly come to an end? Would it creep up behind mountainside or to the edge of forest, wearing a curious expression, confused? Or, would it have known all along? If I am the Dragon, my higher self, my high Dragon, would I know that I have finally understood the game, the chase and solved the mystery? In doing so, would it not call me to land? To slough off my skin of scale,emblazon me in golden white light, my corporeal casing, splitting open from tip to tail, heaving up from my arrested coil of anger, sorrow, fear and resentment? Would this not be the metamorphosis that I have anticipated and waited to celebrated its arrival? Would I not be the creation of such magnificence, that my vocabulary would fail me, instead taking me to rely only upon the tears that would breach my lower lid cascading over my cheekbone as means of expression?

Yes.