Masons

"Know the secret?"

-- billboards all around southern Ohio, advertising the Free Masons

--

Had an odd dream last night. Here's what I remember.

We were all walking in the city, on sidewalks, and our feet were crammed into Mason jars. Like, the kind that preserves fruits and grains. Full-grown adults walked around, sort of on crumpled tip-toe, the digits on their feet useless after a lifetime of being crushed. Even toddlers, just learning to walk, had their tiny feet in Gerber jars or small jars for jam. When we walked, there was the grating noise of glass on concrete, glass on sidewalk. We all looked unhappy. None of us could remember why our feet were in Mason jars.

Until one day, I was out walking, and I saw a man, a crazy, homeless-looking man, who had insects in the jar with his feet, kicking his Mason jars against a brick wall. The grating sound of glass on brick, over and over. He kicked with his right, then with his left, then with his right again, like a Thai fighter in training. He didn't make any noise with his throat except grunting. He took breaks every few minutes, and we all watched him.

Finally, the jars broke from his feet, and broken glass tinkled all around him like fairy dust. The insects in his feet buzzed away, freed. The man exclaimed to all of us that we could all be free like he, if we would only kick our glassed feet against the jar. He said he had kicked for years, but every agonizing kick was worth feeling the way he felt now.

We looked at him strangely, and then a little girl started kicking the brick wall. Her mother tried to stop her, then, embarrassed, joined her daughter. Then another group joined. Then I joined. Eventually, the whole group of us were crowded against each other in a bizarre mob, all vying for a spot of wall.

The sounds of glass on bricks were like bells. Somewhere in the crowd, someone's jar would burst, the glass shattering and singing on the sidewalk, and they would cheer and urge us on. We kicked and kicked for days and nights. When anyone seemed just about ready to give up, someone nearby would break the glass and rejoice, massage their ankles, and despair turned to joy.

When my jars finally broke, it was nighttime. The air was cool on my ankles, the pads of my feet. I kicked the brick once with my bare toes, just to see what it felt like, and it hurt like hell. I started hopping on the other foot, and I hopped onto broken glass. I had never stepped on anything, nothing had ever punctured the skin of my feet. It cut me deeply, and when I asked the person next to me for help, I saw that I was the last person to free my feet, because everyone else was lying on the ground, weeping, crying out in pain from the broken glass. Whenever one person would try to pick himself or herself up off the ground, gingerly sending limbs to safe spaces of pavement, they would either fall from pity for everyone else, or they would be pulled down.

We stayed that way for days, and nights. It seemed no one slept.

Until one day, the same crazy, homeless-looking man appeared in our midst, but this time, he was dressed in a suit and had gotten a haircut. He looked like one of us. He told us that he had escaped our hobbling mob and had walked around the rest of the city, showing everyone his beautiful ankles, and he had had this experience and had to come back to us. We showed him our bruised elbows, our crushed toes now bleeding with cuts. He nodded, and showed us the bag he had brought with him. Inside the bag, he told us, are a thousand pairs of Mason jars, and if we wanted to, we could put our feet back inside.

And we did.

We then resumed walking around the city, and our new jars crushed the broken glass unto a fine dust, a shimmering powder, and it blew away in a gentle breeze. It looked like light particles, flying like scarves blown in the wind, dissipating into the sunshine.

We never saw the crazy man again.