I feel like my mind is running in a fury. A speeding barrel rolling down a hill. The force of the speed trying to throw the staves off, at the same time the impact of each connection with the ground seeming to want to push the walls inside. The forces balanced so perfectly, nothing could move in either direction. The forces are balanced. How to explain what that means, what it feels like to have the push and pull of speed balanced out. One thing could go wrong, one moment faster or slower could destroy the balance so quickly. At the same time though, the balance is amazing. My mind seems to be running along between being unable to think clearly, and also seeing all of the things around me more cleanly than ever before. Like my voice is stuck in my head, but also, my thoughts are clear. I had a flashback to my first moments of remembering. How long ago that all seemed.

Last night, my dreams spanned ages that I can’t even understand. It was hundreds of millions of years, all stacked into the moment of my mind. Trying to place my mind in a frame to understand what that could even mean. What does 115 million years ago look like? How would i know what to even do to wrap my mind around something so immense, and so long ago. So many years running back behind me. I don’t think that our brains are meant to think of ideas so large. I can’t tell if this is a design flaw, or if the cruel efficiency of evolution has simply decided that having the ability to remember back long enough for that doesn’t matter. It didn’t serve any purpose to our lives, and short that they are it was pared away. Did our species ever remember ages ago like that? DId we at one time, spin our minds back to the distant past?

I was walking down a long corridor. Something carved out of stone, the walls were so high above my head. It didn’t seem that they could hold themselves up from that high. They towered above me. Carved walls from the river. Millions and millions of years of work. Smooth and red and beyond my scope of understanding. I stood there for a long time. My head craned up, just staring up these smooth red walls. I couldn’t tear my gaze away from them. Couldn’t look away. I knew there was other things, other sights to see. I couldn’t look away. I just stood and stared. Thinking of water carving out all of those meters of rock and stone. I was spellbound i think. Or something like spellbound. When my neck started to hurt, and i couldn’t hold my head back, i remember thinking that i was going to lose this moment in moving.

I didn’t though. I looked down, and saw the boulders from farther down. Rocks larger than a car, that had simply fallen away from the wall. Huge carved chunks missing from the wall itself. I can’t think of what would cause something that large, and that heavy to fall away. The rocks seem smooth and solid. Then i look at the rocks that had fallen, and realize how old those look. I can’t tell when they fell. I can’t tell the time it would take for the rocks to weather as they had. The edges that at first seemed so sharp, seemed smoother when i really noticed them. Years and years of slow wind and rain wearing the rock down. How many years ago had these falling from the wall? What would the sound of a boulder that size falling be. Were there people here to hear that sound when they fell? Would i have recognized them as human if there was? The time of all of this was heavy here. A place to make you think about ages and ages ago.

Then i noticed it. Sitting on the ground. Sitting almost invisible under dust by the foot of one of the huge rocks. I don’t know how i noticed it. I also don’t know how i missed it. It seemed like it was why i had stopped here. Why this place was where i came to rest. It couldn’t have been bigger than my palm. And in the dream i have small palms. I can’t rememeber the size of my hands. Shouldn’t i remember that? I know i should, but the longer i live here in this place, the less i remember of the other. Here though, i can see my hand reaching down. I picked up this tiny stone.

It was an irregular circle of stone, maybe a centimeter thick. Maybe a little bit more, but not much. In the center of the stone, was a tiny fossil of a fish. The fish was small and thin. Flat against the plane of the stone itself. Just sitting there, it’s head crooked slightly down. Like it had died in a storm and fallen to the mud. Then it hit me. How old this fish must be. How long had this fish laid down in the stone of this wall. How many millions of years old was this fish? What could have been here when this fish was swimming in the river below me. What changes had happened. Was the river at the level of where the missing boulder was resting? How long to carve through so much stone.

I have never had my vision so narrowed. So focused on a single thing. It reminded me of the feeling i got seeing the trail pull up into the bag carried by that man i dreamed of. Something about the two seemed the same. Something in the single focus on something so small, but also so important. I couldn’t look away from this fish. This animal was alive. This animal lived, and died, and was here. Here where i was standing. This fish tied my body back to millions of years ago. Something from then made it to here.

I don’t know where this dream came from, but I hope that I dream of that place more. There is something my mind is trying to pull together about the span of time. The space of time and matter, and how things can echo down from then to now. How things can echo back from now to then. How maybe there might be a way to echo down to the next age after us.