The Subconscious Theater

There is a forest in my mind. It is an incomprehensibly huge place, encompassing all of the forests of the world and none of them. Within it are cool shadows, the bitter smell of rotting leaves, the soft scratch of dead pine needles underfoot. The trees soar up and away into the blue sky, sometimes crowding out the view so completely that walking beneath their branches is akin to walking through a tunnel or a cave, trusting only the instinct for light to lead the way out. Roaring waterfalls echo between the pines. Streams babbles away within their mossy banks, talking even when no one is listening. And the narrow deer paths that lace through the hardwoods always seem to emerge upon a grassy meadow, or the top of a hill overgrown with flowers, or even the precipice of a dusty cliff made of red rocks that stretch all the way down to a sudden canyon's bottom.

The forest covers an immense distance, but it does end. It is bordered on one side by a road of hard-packed dirt. The road goes many places both backward and forward, but its real purpose is to provide a break in the trees so one can finally reach the sea. Crossing the road leads to a short stretch of yellow grass and a longer stretch of shale and tumbled stone that forms a barrier before the dunes. On the other side is a shore, a gentle curve of white beach like a patch of spilt sugar between dunes and waves and jetty. Gulls appear, wheeling and crying. Otters rock upon the grey ripples of the water, diving for urchins and abalone. And at the end of the jetty is an old rowboat, tied to a posted wedged into the rocks. It rises and falls with the tides, weathered and wearing only one white coat of paint.

The rowboat has a single purpose - to get to the small island a few hundred meters away from the jetty. On the island is a lighthouse and a small white cottage. The lighthouse can be seen for miles, its tower striped black and red, its light flashing in unhurried circles. Within its impossibly large rooms are dozens, sometimes hundreds of people and animals. And, jammed to the gills as it is, it's amazing the light is lit at all.