Second, if you're my kid, I'd encourage you to wait on reading this until you'll note your own process - answers to the game - and I wouldn't begin that until much later - some time after your fortieth birthday. Save it. It can be done only once and it's going to be cooler to wait for more time on the planet.
Next, I read the introduction to the game, decided to do it when I had more time, and sat down with it early one morning, after the house was quiet. I did follow the rules of "one question at a time" and did them in order, writing my responses as I went along. My story follows - including the little side note which I'll put in parenthesis.
I am dreaming. It begins after the beginning and ends before the end. I see my feet - walking, barefoot in powdery light dirt. The dirt, like the air, is warm, pleasantly so. Things feel calm, clean. I am in "the country". Grass and trees are all around - big trees, soft grass. Then people - like a camp - and some low buildings - also like a camp. There is singing - joy - laughter. There is a swing - near a lake. I am walking to the swing. I feel peaceful.
In the dream, I wake up in a smallish house. Various rooms are connected by covered, sometimes screened porches. My bedroom views a lot of "green" with a view of the beach. Some of the house walls slide open. It feels unfettered by safety concerns. The interior is basically white with muted grey. I see paintings with blues and greens. The house smells crisp - like linen. Everything is very tidy, but not austere. I feel old wood floors underfoot. I do not know where the house is. I cannot see other houses or buildings. It may be on an island, but it doesn't feel isolated. Maybe it is in the Puget Sound area NW of Seattle. I sense both lakes/rivers and ocean, but there are a lot of trees around.
It is early in the day, the hush of night is lifting, but the birds aren't active yet.
I came through a sliding screen door to get into the kitchen. The kitchen is nice. To my left is a big table with banquet seating and five chairs, it is open to the kitchen as is a great room. The kitchen has a high ceiling with sky lights - light is streaming in. The cabinets are medium dark wood - plain, and open shelves house basic dishes. The counter tops are cream colored with specks of grey to black, there are a few shimmery flecks catching the light. The appliances are under the wood - veneered - invisible. The sink is one, dark and deep. The oven is in an alcove with counter tops on either side - I think the counter top is steel, it is different. A pantry wraps the two outside walls of the kitchen. My coffee is in the pantry.
Now I am leaving the kitchen to go for a walk. As I step outside I see trees framing a lawn on the side of the house where I'm walking out. They provide a nice cover, but aren't super dense - there is grass under them and they part - or there is a wide opening in front of me with a sand/dirt path way - it opens up to reveal a shore line. Nearest to the house there are no tree trunks, but large branches stretch towards the house covering part of the patio like an umbrella - there is a bird feeder hanging there, but no outdoor furniture. I sometimes sit in the shade on the edge of the deck.
I am walking a winding path of stones and sand, past rocks and dry reeds that rattle and hum in the breeze. I crest a rise and start down. Looking around, I see beside the path a bowl which I pick up and carry with me. It is a clay bowl which I threw. It was fired with turquoise glaze rolled inside the bowl and then wiped clean for a "non-drip" edge. The outside of the bowl is natural, untooled clay, but you can see where my hands shaped it. It is rounded, well formed, sturdy yet relatively light. It fits in both hands best - as a serving bowl. My "D" and a tiny heart are imprinted and filled with turquoise on the bottom and there is a "footing ring" as a base.
The path moves on past ruins, there are false turnings everywhere, but I move straight on. Beside the path I see a key which I pick up and carry with me. The key is to a BMW - not really - the key is as long as my hand. It is golden with green oxidation - oh there are other colors too. The top of the key is ornate - like CELTIC scroll-y stuff, but flat and detailed where the lattice like pieces meet. It's a pretty fancy key. The business end is quite simple though. It looks like a hollow tube - writing pen sized. I can see "ridges" when I look inside the key "barrel". I have never seen a key like this. It feels worn smooth, comfortable in my hand. The key feels - alive -in my hand. "It" doesn't change from metal, but it seems to "turn on ?" as my hand warms it up.
(I am starting to feel a little uneasy about this ten question game. I am concerned that it doesn't end as nicely as it began.) (The feeling that the key likes me is almost too weird.)
Now the path has moved out of the forest into the open. It has grown hot. I find myself at a body of water. I am not surprised that the path has opened to water nor that it is hot. I walk right in to the - what? An ocean? It is salty water. I am all the way in. The bottom is smooth - I can see my feet, the water is very nice, warm, not overly wavy, just perfect. I see rainbow colored strings, the length of my fingers flowing in the water. The water is alive, nourishing. I see a dolphin type animal moving towards me. I smile.
The path is under water. I can see it, but the water gets deeper and deeper. The dolphin who has golden shimmery skin, silently tells me to hold on to his fin. I have the key and the bowl in my other hand and I tell him (again, silently) that I don't know how to keep everything with us in the water if I have only one hand to use. He says press the key against your heart and I do. The key "adheres" to my body - as though there is a spot specifically "key case" sized there. I am amazed. The dolphin has laughing eyes. He enjoys my pleasure at this discovery. I cup the bowl over the key and hold it close in the crook of my arm. With my left arm wrapped across my body, I hold on to the dolphin with my right hand. He says I am not hurting him. He is swimming us along - pleasantly, purposefully. I become smaller, or he becomes larger, I do not know which, as we approach a wall which seems to rise out of the water. As he slows down, my legs and feet sink down and I feel a solid surface under them. It feels like rock but there is a suction type thing also, like when you stand in sand along the shore. My feet feel "hugged" as I climb the wide shelf-like risers out of the water.
The wall is pearl like - white, seamless, but different from a pearl in that it does not have a solid edge - it is opaque - it looks like - I can't find the words exactly. It's solid because of its ... like water from way up high is "solid" if you enter it "wrong". This wall is "veil-like" - curtain like - I walk right into it! Exactly like entering the water! Those rainbow threads are moving everywhere in here - they are swirling together like DNA helix - double helix - sometimes they look like flowers - sometimes they look like dancing threads. My bowl is changing! It is humming like the reeds! It is becoming GOLD. My tears of joy, old sadnesses, I thought joy, but it started as joy and amazement, but now it feels like every hurt, broken, ugly part, memory, deed - it feels like I am becoming "clean" as tears flow out of me in the veil/wall. My bowl is filling up with the tears of me. The gold is rising with the tear line! My joy increases as the tears leave my body. I sense that there was pain and grief where goodness is seeping in to fill. I feel sad for myself even as I forget sadness - it is like lotion on very dry skin - you didn't know it was dry until the lotion, then you realize how bad it felt because of how good it now feels.
All I can see is light.
I am "on the other side" of the "wall". I hold my golden bowl in both hands as an offering.
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