7190. BELOW THE WATER LINE, pt. 15

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 15)

I mentioned before about the dream world and the

memories involved here; well, there's more. There's

more here and I swear I've never been able to figure it

out, unless it was some weird sort of destiny involved.

Behind my house, on the strip of no-man's land property

which covered the area from the ending of my yard to the

railroad tracks, there was an old, hollowed-out oak tree.

Actually, the remnants of it are still there today  -  it's

still a tree, old, diminished, somewhat suffering. No matter.

The first ten or twelve feet of the tree, at ground level, had

once been burned or cut or somehow suffered some tough

injury, and was actually hollowed out. As a kid I was able to

put my entire body in it, it being about kid-sized and higher,

so what within the tree I could look up, into the tree some more.

The tree was sound, grew steadily and remained strong - it

seemed to have compensated and grown heavier seams of

bark and support around this. Inside that tree, so to speak, I

was in a very weird, particular form of other-worldliness. My

entire life has since been spent with dreams of imaginings, from

somewhere deep within myself, of previous lives or life anyway

as a tree-dwelling forest elf, or something of that nature  - Druidic

pre-civilization humanoids dwelling deep in the dense oak forests

somewhere, using trees for shelter and domicile. It happened 

when I was seven and eight, and it still occasionally happens

now. I have no idea, but I live with it and I understand and

feel the wave and the pattern of such things within myself. I

accept, and I don't ask too many questions, viewing it as just 

another life-reason as to how and why I ended up in this odd 

place, this new location, this 'Avenel' of my being. I have friends

and kindred beings in that environment, and they are still there

today, present and out of time. This was the corner tree of a small

oak grove of some five trees total  -  obviously the major tree, or

the original of the group. It was easily climbable, with well-spaced

and tough, heavy limbs. With my friend Jimmy's help, we'd made

a treehouse of sorts about halfway up it, just before it began to be

too treacherous to go higher, for us anyway. A platform more than

a tree house, boards were always falling off; the plywood sheet floor

of it, upon which we stood and stretched was really the most and only

stable part. There was a lumber yard down the street and from the

rear, railroad side of that lumberyard we were always able to get

some wood, some factor of board or cut-off lumber for our use,

plus, in my own yard, my father had a real pile of crap-lumber 

cuttings and things behind the shed he'd built. As Jimmy more or

less faded from the treehouse aspect of things, it became more and 

more just mine. I'd go up there for hours, just looking out  - the very

best parts of it were that no one bothered me, I was above the trains, 

which would run below it all and just over a little, and  -  best and 

most decisive of all, at the top left of my viewpoint, on clear days,

was a most perfect apparition of the New York City skyline. It was

captivating, and always called to me. Here again, the dream-dimension

kicked in and haunted me  -  I could swear, from this vantage point, to

not just be seeing the skyline, the outlined perimeter of NYC, but I

would  -  now, to this day  -  swear to you that I  -  as if holding some

great cosmic magnifier  -  was able to beam in, see actual street-life and

goings-on, buildings and corners, details and items. Yes, it was bizarre,

and still is - for instance, why I would often focus on the Lexington 
Ave., corner of 42st, at the Chrysler Building and the Daily News 
Company's huge lobby and globe, the area of the Tudor City elevation 
and area, it's all beyond me. That's the east side, for pity's sake, at the 
UN pretty much, and would be completely opposite to my westside NJ 
viewpoint, and farther uptown as well, but there it was. I was 
transported. This entire cityscape called to me, drew me in, had my 
growing soul already wrapped up. I somehow just knew I had a certain 
destiny to meet there. None much of this 'Avenel' stuff for me, soon 
enough. In awe, I would descend from that tree and could do nothing 
but remain quiet. There was no one to tell this stuff too, and I knew 
no one would ever understand.