A lot of people say they have visions. It's usually religious folk. But, I think I had one, too. Or at least that's what I'm calling it.

It was about 4:30 or 5 in the morning. I can't remember exactly. I hadn't slept and was lying in bed with my eyes closed, trying to at least capture a few hours before the stresses of the next day began.

I had been blogging on Steem all night, and kept awake with nerves, and possibilities, and thoughts of the future. Shinzo Abe's new "Conspiracy Act" was on my mind. By the standards set by this new legislation, I could easily be classified a terrorist here.

Work, bills, and taxes were on my mind. My job that is good but I do not love was on my mind. My son, my family. Are they gonna be alright? How can I take care of them better? How can I secure our future--their future--as much as possible in this bizarro, fraught-with-threats fantasy folks call "society" or "real life"?

Anyhow, I was not really falling asleep, but my body and mind were so tired that it kind of happened anyway. I feel into a sort of hypnagogic state. Half-sleeping , half awake, with my eyes closed.

Light patterns were playing before my eyes in silvery flashing browns and reds and purples. I was somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness. Then, without me thinking anything, something abruptly came into focus. It seemed real. Not like a dream, and not like an image I could imaginatively construct on my own from the flashing patterns. It was there, and I was there, though still bathed in browns and purples. This movie presentation from my mind lasted just a few seconds.

---

I was on an escalator going down. I could see the shiny metal ridges of the steps. I looked to my right, down by my feet, and saw something lying there. It was a fleshy, half-dead, grayish-brown looking frog, in the space between the moving metal steps and the wall of the escalator. It's leg was broken, or it was half smashed, and the frog was struggling to move. To move away. The metal tines of the steps seemed to threaten squashing this frog and mutilating him as he--almost pathetically--attempted to move away.

Then it ended. A second picture flashed into my mind almost as an immediate follow up to this. I saw that same frog, hopping into a tiny little pond of muddy water surrounded by grass, and immediately his legs were restored and he began to swim around easily.

---

I was a bit startled. I opened my eyes and thought about what I saw.

I wasn't entirely sure why I had seen it, but I had been on the same escalator earlier that week. I had also seen some very big frogs in a ditch outside, and they were so fucking big and lumpy and weird-looking as to almost be disturbing when they moved. I had seen Murakami's "Super Frog Saves Tokyo" in the bookstore. My son had been hopping like a frog, too recently, and my wife commented on how much he loved frogs.

All these things play into the subconscious tools and elements one's mind uses to bring forth these sorts of movies, it seems like. These small details are really neither here nor there, though. The meaning of the message was clear to me almost immediately. Even before I "thought about" what it meant. When I had seen it, something was struck inside, causing a deep, sympathetic resonance.

I could feel this message in my chest:

The frog is you. You and your family are stuck on/in this machine that could, with one "wrong move," mutilate and destroy your entire life. You are not in your natural habitat, and you are longing for your pond, where you will not be threatened by unnatural and brutal mechanisms. Where you can be yourself and do as you please. Where you and your family might be safe, at least from unnatural destruction.

---

All the unexpressed stress I had been feeling had brought this vision to me, and re-presented it to mind's eye in a way so as to make my innermost, and most visceral feelings more clear, in the form of a simple, visual-symbolic illustration. My mind could now recognize it. Literally, re-COGNIZE it.

The implications of this "frog vision" for me seem to go on and on, but there would be no real way to adequately express them here, I am afraid. Suffice it to say, I am struggling on, in my own unique way, to that small little pond far away from the department store escalator. Maybe I will see you there?

~KafkA

---

Graham Smith is a Voluntaryist activist, creator, and peaceful parent residing in Niigata City, Japan. Graham runs the "Voluntary Japan" online initiative with a presence here on Steem, as well as Facebook and Twitter. (Hit me up so I can stop talking about myself in the third person!)