blinkinglights

So my family and a I were part of a big boisterous clan of horse-riding nomadic people. We were all gathered around that evening to watch our traditional form of storytelling play out, as performed by a couple of our young men. The way it worked was, they arrayed a set of small horse-figurines in traditional panoply on a couple of gridmarked low, square tables. We all sat around in a sort of low oasis grotto or amphitheater--I got the sense that it was rocky, dry, and inhospitable just beyond the bowl of our little valley--and as the stars came out in the sky, they started their performance. It was very stylized and involved moving the little figures solemnly one by one, while letting out great cries and noises to tell the story. Not words, just these ritualized and highly codified hoots and musical crashing and banging. Even though I think they were telling a story of some great historical war between clans or something serious, all of us assembled thought it was hilarious. And all of us were falling over each other laughing and admonishing each other breathlessly to be quiet and pay attention. The young men were very tolerant of their audience, as I guess this sort of behavior was to be expected on whatever holiday this was.

Afterwards, as dawn turned into day (it had some of the alacrity of the Minecraft day/night cycle, which I had been wrecking my nerves over just before I went to sleep. that game is fucking terrifying) we packed up. The hilarity had receded and everyone was seriously setting to the task of breaking camp. Our furniture was dark and richly finished, and it all broke down so that it could fit on some few wagons I was vaguely aware existed besides all the pack-horses, possibly drawn by camels. We had a big ponderous dining table and some other stuff. Anyway as I watched these things get broken down into surprisingly small and portable component pieces, I was having a kind of serious conversation with I think my mother or somebody else important and involved with what was coming next. I was feeling apprehensive, because soon, I was going to have my coming-of-age ceremony. Shane was "my" horse in the dream, and since we were horse-nomads, to enter adulthood I would need to symbolically complete his tack. He was all tacked up already for the occasion and all that was left to acquire for him was a bucking strap (a mysterious piece of tack I'd heard my mom talking about with the saddle fitter yesterday, I still don't know what one is. in the dream it was just a long, thin double leather ribbon).

So, I rode Shane to Wal*Mart all on my own, but I think trailing everybody in the family a distance behind so they could see how I was doing. I left Shane outside with them and went into Wal*Mart. I wandered around a little and couldn't find the bucking straps (this wasn't a very clear or important part, it wasn't a "wandering around, can't find x" dream) and eventually I found a salesperson who had an array of bucking straps in a variety of colors rolled up like belts. He was telling me about the properties of the different colors. He handed me a faded looking black one and said it was the best, and that dark black was the worst and white was better than dark black. I frowned and tried to dispute some contradictory point he'd made, like, if what he was talking about was due to pigment density, wasn't that white one the best, and not this grey one? I don't think he could answer to my satisfaction. Anyway I asked him to bring out a series of different colors and patterns--"Do you have this kind?" etc.--until finally I settled on a brown one. I said, oh good! I'll just pop out the front and test it against my horse's kit in the parking lot, and come back and buy it if it matches. But he was all, nooooo, you can't take merchandise out of the store like that. Here, chip off a tiny piece from this rivet connecting all the brown bucking straps together. And I was like, sure, and I did, and came out of the store in a stately fashion, aware of my clan all looking at me approvingly outside a ways off. I held up the crumb to Shane's saddle critically and at length judged that it matched well enough, so I went back inside, acquired the brown bucking strap, and then had a confused few moments of trying to figure out how it actually fit on the horse. I...don't think the configuration I eventually came up with was how it actually went.

Anyway, then I think we all rode home, or onwards anyway, and then we had a big party of which I was an important central figure and the last thing I remember is everyone arguing and bossing each other around goodnaturedly about who I was going to squeeze in between at that big table, which had been set up again somewhere Minecraft-forest-style close and dark, but with bright homey lanterns and stuff to keep the night back.