How to Dream

How do you keep dreaming sleepless dreams when all that you dreamt dissolved in the night?

Is it giving up or moving on? Is there even a difference? It appears that the latter is simply an excuse for the first, because no one wants to be a quitter. And yet the rational mind can ration its way out of most anything, while at the same time, with enough empathy, can get dragged back down the other way. That’s the problem with true rational analysis: like the scene of a courtroom trial, all sides arise. True, false, defense, prosecution, theoretical, factual, past, future and present.

That is the problem I pondered as I drifted off to sleep one night. It appeared that all that I knew and planned had just come crashing down the past couple years. Funny how fragile plans are, no? I had one too, you know. I was going to finish school, get that apartment downtown that I’ve been saving up for, work at the trade I had trained for and chase my fickle, temperamental dream that I loved so but knew would never support me. I had plans. It was going to work. Maybe I wouldn’t have had many numbers in the bank, maybe the people I knew wouldn’t approve, but I would’ve been happy. If you’re doing what you were destined to do, you will be happy, wouldn’t you?

Where did it all go? I don’t know. Two years later, in a different city, two bedroom home, long hour days and lack of the chase of my dream, I’m still trying to figure the mess of the smoking crash site out.

“What happened to us, Toni?” I whispered to my cat as she jumped up beside me and curled up on my feather down pillow covered in silk. I hate this pillow. Memory fails me when I question why I still have it till I remember why. Gifts from influential individuals can be trying to be rid of. My cat ignored me, as usual. Is that what happened? Did I ignore my love and leave it to die?

Lying my head down, I tried to forget the day, but I always remember tomorrow will be the same. Exhausting. Endlessly looping back to the same thing. Perhaps I should get out; wouldn’t you agree?

I dreamt a memorable dream for the first time in awhile that night. Lights out, misty night, a walk in the park was what it was. I sat down at one end of a park bench. The fellow to my right seemed to be sleeping lightly, but he spoke to me as soon as I settled in.

“I think I’ve quite forgotten how to dream,” he mused lightly, stirring in his seat. “But sometimes, in sleep I happen to believe that I might still have hope.”

“Hope?” said I.

“Yes, hope. Hope to dream once again. Hope for the courage to live a dream in the land of the waking.”

“Ah, but you cannot?”

He sadly shook his head. “No, not for a long time. The death of one dream was the death of a part of myself. Now, my only dreams are the ones in sleep of night or toxic quiet.”

“But we cannot live in sleep.”

“No,” he agreed. “And that is why one must never stop dreaming.”

I think my heart broke just a little at those words, for it was then that I saw that my dream was that of myself with too many dreaming nights and dreamless days.