Flash Nonfiction: Reflections on a Dream from Saturday, October 19, 2019 by T. L. Sullivan

By T. L. Sullivan

I was being followed by a line of clods/piles of dirt coming out of a mousehole. I thought I saw a black snake starting to come out of the hole, then I woke up.
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Sometimes, when I am very stressed or overwhelmed, I wish that I could be in a deep, dark hole, so far underground that the light from the surface is only a tiny little speck in the distance, like a star. When I finished my first driving lesson, I was so upset that I went home and cried, and then fantasized about living in a world where there were only dogs, and no humans, so I would never have to learn how to drive. Humans are very strange, unlike dogs, who are very logical, if not always kind. Many people will waste their entire lives doing something that they hate and consider it well-spent, as long as they have plenty of money.

Or they will spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about how life is going to end, So So So Very Soon, And I Have Done So Little, Just Look At Usain Bolt!, and arguing over and preparing for What Might Maybe Happen When It’s All Over. Your life is very short. Perhaps it seems long to you. I’m sure that two months seem awfully long to a fruit fly. Enjoy what time you have. Once it’s up, there will be no opportunity for a do-over. You will have no time for regrets, as much as you will have no time for reading a book that teaches you exactly nothing, daydreaming, listening to an album all the way through, going for a bike ride, painting something you will never show to anybody, or picking flowers, ever again. Just because you are not “working” does not mean that you are wasting your time. Liking to do something is enough to justify doing it, as long as that thing isn’t throwing ice-balls at people who bike past your house, or eating glass. Importance is relative.

Almost anyone you will talk to has forgotten that death is just a piano waiting to drop on your head. You never know when it’s going to happen.

​But it will.