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Only slightly late...
Thursday
It’s the same dream everybody has: the one where you’re walking home and suddenly you realize there’s something behind you. So you walk a little faster into the unfamiliar shadows of the familiar path, and a little faster, and faster until you’re moving at a flat out run. And the world grows darker around you and you’re lost racing down your own street, and you feel it gaining.
But you don’t look back; it doesn’t matter how terrified you are, you never look back because no matter how horrible it is to think there’s a monster behind you, it would be far worse to look back and know.
So you keep running.
You’re staring at the moon as you run, because the shadows are melting around you and it’s the only bright thing around. You’re afraid that the shadows might be sticky, and if they get beneath you they’ll make you stop.
The moon isn’t quite full, and as you run towards it you realize that it doesn’t look so much like a moon at all, but a face (Which is odd, really, because you’ve never been able to see the man in the moon). As soon as you see the face you notice that what you had taken for the play of shadow through cloud is really hair, and that the sharp light of a star shines from an eye deeper than the darkness.
And what had been the night sky above you, cold and foreboding, is now a man wrapped in a black cloak. He stands near you, and watches as you run.
What are you escaping? he asks.
“There’s a monster after me,” you say.
He looks behind you, considering. And how can you be certain, who have never faced this beast?
“I know,” you tell him. “I have to keep running.”
But you aren’t getting anywhere.
You frown at him, and when you look down you see that while your feet are pounding at the street, he’s simply standing beside you. You stop, confused.
You stare at him for an eternity, or perhaps a moment, and then slowly turn around, powerless to stop yourself from finally looking back and seeing…
The street you grew up on stretched away before you, lawns bright green under sunlight. Your house, white and green, is standing on the corner, and in front of it is the blue slide your father sold when you were eight. You take in the panorama, and then turn back the way you were headed. The old house is that way too, but the slide is gone and the street is jagged with shadows.
“I’m dreaming,” you say.
Yes, says the man beside you.
“And I know you.”
Indeed, he says. But people forget, in waking time.
You nod at this. “I’m not awake.
No.
You close your eyes, shutting out the backgrounds of memory and trying to remember. “You are... you are the poetry that comes from inside.”
If you like.
You stare down the shadowed street. You’re not afraid anymore, and for all that the trees scratch at the wind and the darkness creeps, it feels like a cheap movie set that would collapse if you reached for it.
“I was going to be a poet, once,” you say. “I spent my whole life trying to learn how, trying to become great. And now I make minimum wage at a poor man’s Staples.”
He doesn't reply, which is just a different type of answer. You think that you should be angry with him, but there isn’t any emotion left in the dream, now that the fear’s drained away.
You turn around again, and as you do everything lightens until you see the same street in daylight. Daylight, yes, but when you look up, you can’t see the sun; the sparkling lawns and windows are part of a world just as false as the dark one.
“So why come to me,” you ask eventually. “Why now?”
He takes your wrist in his hand. His skin feels strange against yours, like the memory of a touch. This is your dream, but it is also a part of all dreams. All hopes and fears, all tales and the knowledge before the tales: these are my domain. I am responsible for the dreams of the stars and the atoms, and for the sleeping thoughts of every creature on a thousand million worlds.
And I could not have but noticed you tonight, he says, turning your hand over, for you came into my realm bearing THIS.
You stare at the palm of your hand. In the centre, like a burn, in the perfect impression of a penny.
He closes his hand over yours, and when opens it again, the mark is gone. You continue to stare. “What was it?”
A challenge.
“From who?”
My sibling, he says. In his eye a star is burning and red. But I do not play its games.
He starts to leave. You realize that if you don’t squint and remember where he is, he’ll turn back into the sky. You should not have been involved, he says, but it might have been echoes of a thought.
“Wait!” you call, and suddenly his existence doesn’t seem so dependent on perspective. “What happens to me now? Will I wake up as the next Shakespeare?”
He smiles momentarily, amused. It’s an odd expression on him: thin lips pulled tight. You will wake up tomorrow as yourself, he says. He’s quiet a moment, staring off into the shadows, and then says, I could open a way to the poetry, if you wish. But there will be a price.
“What?” you say. “I get to write like Robert Frost, and you get my soul?”
I have no need for souls, he says. You would give me your life, as you have given your earlier years. And I would ask something else.
You rub at the palm that isn’t stamped with currency any more, and stare into the too-perfect, unchanging day. “Nothing with a price,” you say eventually. “There aren't enough steps between owing and being owned.”
He nods. Very well. Then I could take away your dream.
“What do you mean?”
I could destroy the dream of touching a dream. You would no longer wish to capture it in words, or despair that you could not.
“No,” you whisper into the hollow world. “No, I think it would be worse to have nothing left to feel.”
Then your life is your own, he says, and when you turn around there’s nothing left but the moon and stars.
You watch until the clouds slide across the sky, and then you turn halfway between the shadows and the bright flatness on the other side, and wait for the alarm clock to wake you up.
Thursday
It’s the same dream everybody has: the one where you’re walking home and suddenly you realize there’s something behind you. So you walk a little faster into the unfamiliar shadows of the familiar path, and a little faster, and faster until you’re moving at a flat out run. And the world grows darker around you and you’re lost racing down your own street, and you feel it gaining.
But you don’t look back; it doesn’t matter how terrified you are, you never look back because no matter how horrible it is to think there’s a monster behind you, it would be far worse to look back and know.
So you keep running.
You’re staring at the moon as you run, because the shadows are melting around you and it’s the only bright thing around. You’re afraid that the shadows might be sticky, and if they get beneath you they’ll make you stop.
The moon isn’t quite full, and as you run towards it you realize that it doesn’t look so much like a moon at all, but a face (Which is odd, really, because you’ve never been able to see the man in the moon). As soon as you see the face you notice that what you had taken for the play of shadow through cloud is really hair, and that the sharp light of a star shines from an eye deeper than the darkness.
And what had been the night sky above you, cold and foreboding, is now a man wrapped in a black cloak. He stands near you, and watches as you run.
What are you escaping? he asks.
“There’s a monster after me,” you say.
He looks behind you, considering. And how can you be certain, who have never faced this beast?
“I know,” you tell him. “I have to keep running.”
But you aren’t getting anywhere.
You frown at him, and when you look down you see that while your feet are pounding at the street, he’s simply standing beside you. You stop, confused.
You stare at him for an eternity, or perhaps a moment, and then slowly turn around, powerless to stop yourself from finally looking back and seeing…
The street you grew up on stretched away before you, lawns bright green under sunlight. Your house, white and green, is standing on the corner, and in front of it is the blue slide your father sold when you were eight. You take in the panorama, and then turn back the way you were headed. The old house is that way too, but the slide is gone and the street is jagged with shadows.
“I’m dreaming,” you say.
Yes, says the man beside you.
“And I know you.”
Indeed, he says. But people forget, in waking time.
You nod at this. “I’m not awake.
No.
You close your eyes, shutting out the backgrounds of memory and trying to remember. “You are... you are the poetry that comes from inside.”
If you like.
You stare down the shadowed street. You’re not afraid anymore, and for all that the trees scratch at the wind and the darkness creeps, it feels like a cheap movie set that would collapse if you reached for it.
“I was going to be a poet, once,” you say. “I spent my whole life trying to learn how, trying to become great. And now I make minimum wage at a poor man’s Staples.”
He doesn't reply, which is just a different type of answer. You think that you should be angry with him, but there isn’t any emotion left in the dream, now that the fear’s drained away.
You turn around again, and as you do everything lightens until you see the same street in daylight. Daylight, yes, but when you look up, you can’t see the sun; the sparkling lawns and windows are part of a world just as false as the dark one.
“So why come to me,” you ask eventually. “Why now?”
He takes your wrist in his hand. His skin feels strange against yours, like the memory of a touch. This is your dream, but it is also a part of all dreams. All hopes and fears, all tales and the knowledge before the tales: these are my domain. I am responsible for the dreams of the stars and the atoms, and for the sleeping thoughts of every creature on a thousand million worlds.
And I could not have but noticed you tonight, he says, turning your hand over, for you came into my realm bearing THIS.
You stare at the palm of your hand. In the centre, like a burn, in the perfect impression of a penny.
He closes his hand over yours, and when opens it again, the mark is gone. You continue to stare. “What was it?”
A challenge.
“From who?”
My sibling, he says. In his eye a star is burning and red. But I do not play its games.
He starts to leave. You realize that if you don’t squint and remember where he is, he’ll turn back into the sky. You should not have been involved, he says, but it might have been echoes of a thought.
“Wait!” you call, and suddenly his existence doesn’t seem so dependent on perspective. “What happens to me now? Will I wake up as the next Shakespeare?”
He smiles momentarily, amused. It’s an odd expression on him: thin lips pulled tight. You will wake up tomorrow as yourself, he says. He’s quiet a moment, staring off into the shadows, and then says, I could open a way to the poetry, if you wish. But there will be a price.
“What?” you say. “I get to write like Robert Frost, and you get my soul?”
I have no need for souls, he says. You would give me your life, as you have given your earlier years. And I would ask something else.
You rub at the palm that isn’t stamped with currency any more, and stare into the too-perfect, unchanging day. “Nothing with a price,” you say eventually. “There aren't enough steps between owing and being owned.”
He nods. Very well. Then I could take away your dream.
“What do you mean?”
I could destroy the dream of touching a dream. You would no longer wish to capture it in words, or despair that you could not.
“No,” you whisper into the hollow world. “No, I think it would be worse to have nothing left to feel.”
Then your life is your own, he says, and when you turn around there’s nothing left but the moon and stars.
You watch until the clouds slide across the sky, and then you turn halfway between the shadows and the bright flatness on the other side, and wait for the alarm clock to wake you up.
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