the weirdness that is ithaca
i had a very, very weird experience tonight.
i'm reading this book series called "otherland" by tad williams (it's really good, obviously, since i'm still up reading it) and i'm up ungodly late hooked on it. i'm reading this part where an aboriginal character is telling a story about the Dreamtime, and the magical powers that went along with it. anyways, it was nearing midnight, and the air is all thick and muggy with the heat. suddenly i realize i'm hearing flute music coming in through my window, like wooden flute music right out of some backwater third world village or something.
my housemates are asleep. the entire neighborhood is asleep. i didn't want to wake up my housemates, but i was high on eight hundred pages of science fiction and also dying of curiosity, so i climbed out my bedroom window into the midnight air under the full moon and snuck out across my lawn barefoot.
the flute music was coming from just down the street, and i could see a little bit of light coming from the back yard of an old man who lives on the corner. feeling like an absolute creeper, tiptoeing barefoot across my neighbor's blackened lawns at midnight under the full moon, i climbed up into a willow tree between yards in order to get a better view.
the old man was out in his backyard with his dog, this big wolfish shepardy mutt of questionable origin, and some other man i'd never seen before, and they had started a small fire. they were sitting across from each other, one man singing in a language i'd never heard and the other playing an honest to god wooden flute. and i was perched barefoot in a willow tree on the edge of the lawn. i sat there and listened to them and completely lost track of time; eventually the fire died down, the song ended, and they went back inside. i climbed down out of the tree, snuck back across two lawns and through our hedge, and back in through my bedroom window.
and i looked at the clock, and it's now a quarter to three. i was just sitting in a tree in the middle of the night for nearly three hours. what. the. hell.
if i didn't have tree bark in my hair, i'd be willing to say i dreamed the whole thing.
i'm reading this book series called "otherland" by tad williams (it's really good, obviously, since i'm still up reading it) and i'm up ungodly late hooked on it. i'm reading this part where an aboriginal character is telling a story about the Dreamtime, and the magical powers that went along with it. anyways, it was nearing midnight, and the air is all thick and muggy with the heat. suddenly i realize i'm hearing flute music coming in through my window, like wooden flute music right out of some backwater third world village or something.
my housemates are asleep. the entire neighborhood is asleep. i didn't want to wake up my housemates, but i was high on eight hundred pages of science fiction and also dying of curiosity, so i climbed out my bedroom window into the midnight air under the full moon and snuck out across my lawn barefoot.
the flute music was coming from just down the street, and i could see a little bit of light coming from the back yard of an old man who lives on the corner. feeling like an absolute creeper, tiptoeing barefoot across my neighbor's blackened lawns at midnight under the full moon, i climbed up into a willow tree between yards in order to get a better view.
the old man was out in his backyard with his dog, this big wolfish shepardy mutt of questionable origin, and some other man i'd never seen before, and they had started a small fire. they were sitting across from each other, one man singing in a language i'd never heard and the other playing an honest to god wooden flute. and i was perched barefoot in a willow tree on the edge of the lawn. i sat there and listened to them and completely lost track of time; eventually the fire died down, the song ended, and they went back inside. i climbed down out of the tree, snuck back across two lawns and through our hedge, and back in through my bedroom window.
and i looked at the clock, and it's now a quarter to three. i was just sitting in a tree in the middle of the night for nearly three hours. what. the. hell.
if i didn't have tree bark in my hair, i'd be willing to say i dreamed the whole thing.