Greetings Dear Humans

     I am the Hill Creature, a humble servant of the One True God, who is called:    

    The Neverending Dream Queen!

    If you're not already of the faith, then you’re likely wondering: Who is this God? What are the core beliefs of the religion that this moss-bearded siren seeks to convert me to? And what is the deal with the sublimely fetching creatures that he has sent forth?

     All excellent questions. It is my anointed vocation to answer them. But first, if you'll permit, I’ll pose a question to you.

The Sacred Intuition

     Has not some part of you always felt that the most wondrous aspects of life—the arts, multiculturalism, inclusivity, democracy, science, and, of course, love—stem from some expansive divine truth? And that, throughout the ages, those blessed with pureness of perception have accessed and channeled this truth, bringing about human progress? And haven’t you, consciously or unconsciously, always suspected that this truth flows from a holy kingdom and that this place is the wellspring of our eternal souls?

     Well, I have joyous news for you: You were always right! (Feel free to cry out Huzzah!) These miracles are born of the Kingdom of Dream, which is ruled by the Neverending Dream Queen—the Lord almighty!

The Disciples Versus the Possessed

     Tragically, from time immemorial, there have been those who reject the Neverending Dream Queen; who react to divinely-inspired progress with rage; who roil noxiously with misogyny, racism, xenophobia, and the mania to dominate. Why are they like this? The answer is simple. They are possessed. Yes, indeed— possessed by the Neverending Dream Queen's adversary, a scion of nothing called The Colossal Squid God.

     The God-Queen's disciples, the Dreamers, have always believed that, despite demonically inspired setbacks and cultural backslides, sacred human progress is destined to ultimately prevail. The institutions of the possessed were erected on foundations of nothing. If we apply enough pressure over enough years, eventually, they will collapse, one after another, until they are dust. On that holy day, avow the Dreamers, the Squid God 's corruptive influence over human hearts will wither and—praise the Neverending Dream Queen—the works of that foul thing will be forever exiled from this wondrous Earth.

The Present Dream Crisis

  Of late, many Dreamers are experiencing doubts. Oh, let’s be honest; it’s worse than that. Many are in a state of eyeliner-streaked terror, believing the Colossal Squid God’s servants to be on the verge of toppling centuries of divine progress. The fate of hallowed institutions and ideologies—democracy, inclusivity, reason, feminism, egalitarianism—is wobbling like an over-frosted layer cake in a fossil-fueled Portland heatwave. That's pretty wobbly. But do not despair!

     Why not? you ask?

The Hill Creature’s Quest

     I, The Hill Creature, went on a quest. Oh, yes I did. And not just any quest. A quest to save the world! I went searching for our Lord's lost, fabled, holy book:

     The Gospel of Everlasting Dream.

     I was certain that if I could find it, decode its message, and bring it back to this realm, it could act as a ward against the spreading shadow, which I must admit, was beginning to darken even my own soul. Throughout my life, journeying through mysteriously unfolding lands and chronicling these journeys has served as a redemptive escape from the cruel designs of the possessed. So off I went.

     After a series of dizzying and, it must be confessed, at times digressive adventures, including an absinthe-fueled duel with a life-sized marionette; the conducting of a bel canto opera in a garishly bejeweled, erratically drifting zeppelin; and a brief but passionate entanglement with a person I believed to be an exiled contessa, but who was, in fact, a charlatan with a velvet trunk full of wigs, jeweled gloves, corseted satin gowns, and manners cribbed from an ancient, worm-eaten etiquette manual—just to name a few—I finally located the gospel in a place called the Tower of Forbidden Books, on the remote, unmapped island of Here. Don’t you just love remote, unmapped islands? Where would we be without them?

The Gospel Revealed

     Oh! Such celestial revelations lay within the pages of the God-Queen's gospel! Such glittering, fevered truths that indeed held the secret to our salvation. It was dictated by the Neverending Dream Queen to the first human being. The gospel tells us that, upon her birth from a female of humans’ ancestral species Homo heidelbergensis, the Neverending Dream Queen foresaw the broad storyline of humankind’s epic.

     Ever since that morning, She has been observing us in rapt fascination as the fine details of our countless interweaving plots and subplots unfold.

     At this moment in history, She is overcome with excitement and anticipation. Why?

     Well, for the answer to that, we turn to the Gospel:

      Those humans who channel me shall vie perpetually against those who give themselves up to possession by the The Colossal Squid God.. Gradually, my disciples will bring about divine progress and aspects of human civilization will take on the semblance of The Kingdom of Dream. But there shall come a time, after 300,000 journeys of Earth around Sun, when a perfect storm  will hover over humanity, causing my disciples to fear the collapse of all their works and the ultimate victory of The Colossal Squid God.

Now, of course, we know exactly what She was talking about: the rise of neofascism coinciding with climate change, the fracturing of media, mass screen addiction, and the looming destabilizing ascendency of AI. Obvious, right? And more than a little hair raising. But fear not, humans, for the Gospel continues:

     This perfect storm shall not be the end of your epic tale, ye humans. It comprises the dramatic reversal.

     Oh, thank goodness! The dramatic reversal. We all know what that is. A dramatic shift in the direction of the story—in this case, a rather terrifying one for the sane characters, but:

     Following the dramatic reversal will come the epic's glorious climax, in which my disciples, perceiving all that could be irrevocably lost, band together, working with devout fervor to preserve and advance sacred human progress and to save precious Earth.

     What a relief, right?! And that's not even the aspect of the climax that the Neverending Dream Queen is most excited about. Here is what She has been waiting to behold, with bated breath, all these millennia:

     As my disciples perform this sacred work in the shadow of the Colossal Squid God., they shall turn to one another, bear one another's burdens, lift each other up. Each moment spent embracing one another in blessed fellowship is one that that beast cannot penetrate, one where my loving light is all. Each of these moments contains an exalted eternality.

     All around good news!

How to Preach the Gospel of Everlasting Dream?

     So, my quest having yielded such glad tidings, the question was: “How do I convey the gospel to the humans of this realm, so they know not to give up, not to turn away from one another; that on the contrary, they must turn to one another, now more than ever, in accordance with the Neverending Dream Queen’s prophecy?”

     One thing I knew: It must be dramatic, involve glittering, resplendent gowns that I would purchase, and otherworldly masks that I would create. The Lord Almighty had plopped a lot on the Hill Creature’s plate. Fortunately, one night, while I was reading another passage from the gospel—a lengthy, somewhat esoteric section pertaining to the origins of Earth and all physical life forms—a light bulb went off in my leaf-coiffed head.

     Earth is a fragment of me, of the Neverending Dream Queen. In the beginning, Earth was immaterial, composed of pure dream, and dwelt in The Kingdom of Dream with the countless other souls who collectively form my divine consciousness. Deep within the Kingdom, there floats a miniscule bubble of nothing, surrounded by the infinite, holy expanse of myself. It came to pass that Earth fell through a perforation in the membrane of this bubble.

HILL CREATURE FUN FACT: You humans refer to this miniscule bubble as the universe. Wow.

     Exposure to nothing caused Earth to transform from immaterial to material; to solids, liquids, gases. Eventually, she gave birth to life.

     And then, a little less than four billion years after that, she gave birth to the first of you troublesome, but dear little humans.

     All of the wonders of Earth, living and nonliving, from the soaring trees and towering mountains to the lithest blades of grass and finest grains of sand, possess a fragment of Earth's soul. And Earth, herself, is a sentient fragment of my soul: dream transformed into physicality.

Ah-ha!

     “By Jove, I’ve got it,” I thought. If everything here on Earth is one with The Neverending Dream Queen and She is raptly observing humanity’s epic as it nears its climax, breathlessly anticipating how profoundly the characters will love each other, then it follows that every time a human responds to these frightening times by loving and supporting those around them, everything in their natural environment—every tree, every stone, every gust of wind, every squirrel—is flooded with joy and anticipation. Because this is the part of humankind’s epic saga that they’ve all been waiting for. They know that this communal love is profoundly holy in and of itself, and that it is instrumental in overcoming the Colossal Squid God and preserving sacred progress. Makes sense, right? A pretty straightforward interpretation of holy scripture.

     I knew what I had to do! I got to work creating representations—masks and costumes—of various aspects of nature, each bearing a face that watches for acts of human love, and delights when it beholds them. And then, I began walking among you in these guises. Beneath the masks, of course, I remain my moss-bearded self: the Hill Creature.                                           

And in the End, the Love you Take….

     Ultimately, all of my pondering over how to convey the fruits of my strange, winding quest distilled to a simple divine truth. I pray that what artistry I have suffices to illuminate it. The love that you give in times such as these is so precious. It means so much. More than you'll ever know. If you see me, the Hill Creature, gallivanting through the streets in one of my guises, may it serve as a small, but joyful, reminder of this.

     Blessings, dearies