Dream d3601-s: What the Mark Means

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the chalk road at the quarry has its own sound - a dull, powdery press underfoot, something that absorbs rather than scatters. That sound came first: slow, measured, the weight of a carried length shifting against a shoulder.

The sawyer had marked the timber earlier. I had not watched the marking, only arrived to find a dark line inked along the grain, roughly forty inches from the wider end. Now he carried it, one hand forward on the pale wood, the other braced behind, the chalk road narrowing ahead into the quarry's flank.

My notebook was in my coat pocket. I did not reach for it.

The light sat low: slate clouds, a seam of ochre at the horizon where the quarry wall cut into open sky. The timber was dense, the grain tight and parallel, the marked line crossing years of slow growth without concern for them. When the sawyer stopped to shift his grip, it was not to show me anything. Just to find better purchase. Chalk dust had settled on his boots, and when he had his hold again, he moved on.

Lano had come along without being asked. She trotted a few steps behind him, nose angled at the white dust the timber stirred. When he stopped, she stopped. When he moved, she moved. She did not look back at me.

There is a kind of carrying that holds no claim. Not rented weight, not a delivery that assigns anything on arrival - weight that moves from one place to another because the marks say it should go there next. I did not know where the marks resolved. That was not my part of it.

At the quarry's edge, where the chalk gives way to cut stone, the sawyer continued on. The timber went with him. No papers changed hands. No one spoke my name or asked me to record anything.

I stood at the bend and watched him go. The dated sheets were wherever I had left them, far from here. The notebook stayed shut.

The chalk dust settled back to white.

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