01/10/05
My Fort, My Protector


This dream started to fade quickly, and I did not take notes.

I remember that for some reason I seemed to be reading or looking for bits of poetry for Ma. I do not know why. It seemed to be mostly nature poetry, I think; we were in the living room and I believe it was daytime, and we were sitting on the couch, Ma closer to the TV. I seemed to be looking through desk calendars for poems. I think I was reading them to her and I knew that she would like this. I do not recall the specific order of this but at some point I took up another desk calendar (you know, those fat little ones with all the pages and pictures) and started looking through it. "This one has nature poetry!" I think I said. I seemed to move over near the heater. I then added under my breath, "Of course, they're all just snippets of longer poems..." I realized that everything I'd been reading was in fact just bits of full poems, not the full poems themselves; I found this somewhat disappointing, but then again you can fit only so much on a desk calendar page, and Ma didn't seem to mind; the poems were pretty enough.

While I was over near the heater it's like I pulled a calendar or something out of a box...I didn't take note of this so I can't remember it by now, sorry. I don't know if it was a calendar or something similar; I get the feeling it was another item like...I don't know. :/ But it was supposed to have inspirational quotes or something in it. All right, I think it WAS a calendar, because at one point as I flipped through it I came across this one particular section and I saw the word "Mackinac." I exclaimed, "Hey, here's something about Mackinac Island!" I felt it was only part of a longer piece of writing, but I wanted to see what it was about anyway.

I took this item out of its container and opened it to this section. Now it looked like a bigger wall calendar with a painting in the upper (right?) corner of a fort and some autumn trees or some such, and writing upon it (typeface); the writing started at the top in one column I believe then took up the bottom in two columns, one of the columns starting halfway down the page because of the image of the fort taking up the corner. The painting continued in muted tones behind the writing. It turned out that the "poem" was not a poem but just an inspirational story, and it was more about Fort Mackinac. It was a very odd item and was a dialogue between somebody (a person?) and Mackinac Island itself.

Now let me try to explain, since I never got to read the whole thing. Basically, the person was asking Mackinac Island what its most important aspects were (I think), and the island would answer these questions. I'm guessing there were at least three different sites mentioned, since that follows the format of a story of this type most closely; the person(?) would ask the island if this was the most important aspect about it, and it would reply why or why not. I skimmed over the story and saw specific mention of a "church" and of Fort Mackinac, and the fort was what ended the story, what the island deemed most important to itself. Allow me to attempt to summarize somewhat how the story thus would have gone.

(First there was some narration, explaining the situation and getting the dialogue started. The rest of the story was in story format, not script format like this.)

Person: "Island, please tell me, which thing is of most importance to you. Is it xxx (fill in some sort of site or landmark)?"

Mackinac Island: "No, this is not what is of most importance to me." (Gives reason why.)

Person: "Then is it the church? (I do not know which church; I thought of Ste. Anne's, though I can't be sure.) Is the church of most importance to you?"

Island: "No, it is not the church. The church is important...(gives reason why)...yet this is not the most important aspect to me."

Person: "What then, Island, is the thing of most importance to you, and why?"

Island: "Out of these things, I would have to say that it is the fort (Fort Mackinac) which is of most importance to me...it sits high atop my bluff, and watches over me, and protects me. It is my citadel, and keeps me from harm. Everything else is important to me, but the fort is the most important thing of all, and I owe my very safety to it. For it I am grateful."

...now...this is HEAVILY, HEAVILY paraphrased! But that's the gist of it. The person asked the island what mattered to it the most and why, and the island did list the qualities of the other features named, yet then decided upon Fort Mackinac as its most important aspect, that which watched over it and kept it safe through all the years. The story was very thoughtfully written, as all the good aspects of everything were listed, like the church and everything else, although I do not remember them. But the fort took precedent over everything else, at least in the island's opinion.

This story was meant to be inspirational, maybe symbolic, in how Fort Mackinac was described as a protector of the island. I remember feeling touched by how Mackinac Island was portrayed as sentient and intelligent, and even grateful to this building; normally I do not care for such stories, but I liked this one. "Oh, this one's interesting!" I exclaimed to Ma, and started to read it, though it was like I started near the end or else tried summarizing it. I began to read but them stumbled over it and had to stop myself and start over again. "Ugh--let me try that again..." And I was right in the middle of starting to read this story out loud to Ma, when I awoke to my alarm clock.

No real-life associations I can think of lately, aside from my abiding interest in Mackinac Island. I have never been particularly interested in or drawn to Fort Mackinac though, and haven't ever even set foot inside it. :/ I can't be certain if the story was meant to be about the fort literally, or if it was meant to be purely symbolic.



2005 Dreams
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