To black stump - Part IV

I don’t realise it yet, but I’m camping near to black stump.
Every day I have wandered this landscape, almost unchanging, and each evening I have come to a spot within about half a mile of black stump.
On the second day I was walking slowly. Sipping my water, not really looking where I was going. Just thinking about my lot. My life’s direction, my eternal soul.
On the third day I was stumbling about. My skin was drying, even blistering. I was dabbing the water onto my lips now. The billabongs all stagnant, the creeks almost empty. But I was in a reverie and I was obsessing about the infinite. At one point I sat down on the broken carpet of this sacred land, crossed my legs and lifted both hands up in praise to the immense sky. After a few seconds its magnitude bore down on me so hard that I toppled backwards and had to cower before it. I covered myself for fully ten minutes until the concentration of the sun on one part of my body began to scorch.
Each night I have slept near to the embers of my fire and dreamt deep of black stump. Perhaps the smoking remains of the burning twigs and branches felt a kinship with their brother, that black corpse of a tree, that charnel stump? Whatever, some magic pulled me away and each night it began the same.
I was lifted, carried almost, from my slumber and I floated with the wisping smoke trails, across the shapeless desert towards black stump. Always towards black stump.
From the ground, the stump was easily lost among the myriad scrambled residue of the Outback. But, from the air, it was easy to see.
Each morning, the start of my dream or my memory of it would jump and skip about, like a cherished record the needle could barely read. On the first day, for example, I recall no descent to the stump - I would simply have appeared there. Then, yesterday I found I had fallen (or been dropped) upon the ground nearby and needed to pick myself up from the dust and walk on a little.
During my first night’s slumber I met my-ex, Pattie, at black stump. It may be a little strange, but I was quite unsurprised to see her there. I was pleased, and immediately inquired after her and her family. Our conversation was polite, always polite.
I noticed she wore little, but a white robe. Her hair was more golden than the blonde I had known and her face seemed to shine. She was an angelic vision and eventually I found myself unable to speak, so captivated was I by her form.
She said I must speak to her, I must continue to search. Her face began to shimmer and glow white, at this. She asked why I came to black stump, why did I call her here? I tried to speak, but it was as if my tongue had grown wings and flown for the moon.
The longer I failed to speak, the more she was transfigured. Her robes sparkled and her skin was bathed in the glow of absolute purity. When I could see nothing but the fizzing whiteness of her open soul, my mouth engaged and words spat forth: “This is how I’ve always seen you.”
As the light receded so did my dream. I was then allowed to wake and remember.
On the second night it was my mother who was waiting for me there, at the blasted stump. Her eyes shone green and her black hair dropped in glossy flows about her shoulders. Her pursed lips were cherry red. She seemed some way between the benevolent Madonna and the blaspheming witch. I was cautious, though she bade me sit.
Questions raced through my head, things I thought I should know. About her, about me, about my father. They had all seemed so important, so fundamental to my life, to how it had turned out, to how it had reached this moment.
But as we sat and eyed each other from our seated positions, I realised there was nothing to ask my mother. There was nothing I needed to know.
In a moment of a dream, my head was dissolved of a lifetime of ponderings, recriminations and insecurities. Fat tears rolled down my cheeks and my mother opened her mouth to sing. From deep within her came a rich baritone, singing in a dead language. A powerful theme with notes slow and long, rising and falling gently like the soft undulations of the landscape about.
After a minute or so of song, she rose straight up from black stump. A graceful ascension into the night sky, the rumble of her voice echoing in the distant hills, and then… awake.
And so to tonight, the night I find black stump.
My dream tonight began quite differently, because it began by being awoken. A tap on the shoulder brought me from my body. I was standing, looking down on my sleeping form. No flight to black stump upon the smoke of my campfire tonight. I could walk.
A man, a tribesman, a stereotype of my mind, perhaps; with long clumped hair, a loincloth, a painted body and a stick or spear waited for me. He led me on a path, which curved like the S of a perfect snake, between five ironbark trees. Trees, somehow managing a hint of life and sustenance in a harsh world.
At the end of the path was black stump. He pointed and I understood. He put words, ideas, images into my mind. He offered me something that night, he suggested it was sanctuary.
I saw a picture there, inside my head. In the image I stepped upon the sacred stump. I understood that this stump was all that remained of a cursed man, turned into a tree and struck repeatedly by the wrath of heaven, until it was sated.
The charred tree and I were then joined. Fresh bark grew up from the stump and new roots flowed down from my feet. I would soon be encased in this new life. An ironbark eucalyptus tree, grown anew in the wilderness.
It was a wonderful sight. Such light and joy in the midst of a desert. But I never needed a moment more to consider his offer. Instead I bowed to the man, turned slowly and retraced my steps back to where my body slept.
Now, I’m almost there. All that remains for me to do is wake myself and recall the route. The route to my journey’s end. The route to black stump.

...to be continued...