Howdy!
SHAKE YOUR PEACE! doesn't use myspace anymore. For all info go to http://www.ShakeYourPeace.com.

I dreamt:

I was sitting on a white queen-sized bed on the plywood ground floor of an unfinished house. It was a conventional construction project: there was exposed drywall around me, nail gun cartridges and paint cans on the floor. Next to the bed was a giant open-air rectangle where a window was going to be glued into place - but now only a few ribbony flaps of transluscent plastic dangled from its frame, gently tossed now and then by the cool night air.

In the corner of the room, next to the cat: Ashley - who was calmly eating her dinner, was a hole in the wall the size of a soccer ball.

Suddenly, a small red fox came running out of the hole extremely fast, ran around the perimeter of the room, leapt onto the bed fullspeed, then dove back into the hole.

I was surprised at how small the fox was - how small and how fast. "I never realized that foxes were so small! I always thought they were just like small coyotes. Bigger than this little guy anyways... I guess I was wrong" I thought to myself. He was no longer or taller than Ashley the cat, but he was defintiely skinnier and scrawnier. He was like a furry red loaf of bread that had gotten squished in the backseat of a car, fast as a hummingbird, smart as a wolf. He definitely had some sort of plan.

The fox repeated his sprint out the soccer hole and around the room about 7-8 more times at 20 second intervals, each time lingering a bit longer on the bed to see how I was reacting, if I was cool with it being there, and if I was going to do something irrational and violent like humans tend to do with wild animals.

By the 8th time the fox picked up on the intention I was trying to radiate out to it: "I'm totally down with you fox. You're my brother. You don't need to be scared. It's confusing because I'm surrounded by all this commercial shit, this poisonous infrastructure, as though it were my home, but it isn't. My home is out that window, where you live, under the starry night, I'm just crashing here at this construction site for the time being, taking up like a stowaway, like a mouse in the wall, like a bird in the chimney. My home is your home. I'm from where you're from. I live out where you live. I'm one of you." and the fox stood on the bed, put his ears back, lowered its head, and started slowly prodding and pawing an inch closer to me across the comforter. His little red body was turned diagonally as he moved towards me all the while leaning away. It looked like at any moment he could just as easily fall onto his side and roll over into "pet me" mode, or sprint away in fear. His body language was clear: "I'm ready to be vulnerable, I want to trust you so bad, I'm willing to be pet, but I am a little nervous because you are a human, and lord knows humans are ridiculous."

Eventually he made it to my gently outstretched hand, and he did that soft bite thing that dogs do, kind of softly chomping all over my hand. Then he fell over onto his side so I could pet him.

I had a powerful feeling sweep through me in that moment as I recalled all the deer I'd encountered as a boy in the foothills and mountains of Utah, all of whom had run from me. I recalled that all the wild animals I'd encountered in my life had run away. And then I recalled that each creature seemed to turn as they'd run from me, each creature had given me a backwards glance, whether it was a deer or a horned owl, or a chipmunk.... all through my life wild animals had run, all had looked back, and in all of their eyes there'd been a message that I couldn't, until now petting this fox, understand:

"We don't want to run, brother."