A morning dream -- someone wanted to know what the sacred symbols of protection were. he wanted to put them up as barriers on the side of the roadway. i didn't understand what he meant, until we reached that part of the road.

A girl, nymph or fairie or angel, was leading me across the 59th Street bridge. But we are on top of all the cars, watching the cleanest, bluest river pass beneath us. It was not the East river of brown, but an ancient river of flowing, purifying water. We passed by the island, and then there were waterfalls beneath us, and then, a long, marble like stretch with no barriers on either side. It would be easy to fall over the edge. This, I understood, was where the sacred protections were called for.

The girl led far in front of me: "C'mon, this way." And I took a breath and moved forward, looking only through to the beautiful water beneath me, not over the edges on either side of the precipe. We reached the end, and there was one more waterfall. I showed her the place where the lightning hit the transformer on the day of our wedding, as we crossed the bridge that morning, knocking out power everywhere below 23rd Street.

The weather had changed, and we were on a field of iciness. It was not cold, but it was... forbidding. We played along some of the places where ice laced through rocks and pools of water, and then looked up above us where the sun was starting to hit the higher land.

She led me then, in that higher ground direction, to a place she wanted to show me, and I followed up the cliff ladder behind her. She turned at the top to grab after an eel: "Good eating." I did not want to eat an eel for breakfast. They seemed... too cosmic. It was a yellow-green-brown pattern, and then it changed, looking more like a Cobra than a river eel.

With this shape-shifting altering the tone of the scene, I started to back away, making my excuses and apologies, and as I took a step down the ladder, saw that within the cliff, behind where my feet had been, was coiled a darker, black and green snake.

Down another step and there was another.

I pushed off from the cliff, using the ladder now turned into rope, and at ever other step, a serpent slept, coiled, and now some of their heads turned to look at me.

I was not afraid of them, per se. But I did not want to find out if they decided to feel disturbed by me. -- the end of what I remember about my morning dream.