THE MOTEL GIFT SHOP
Izzi Sleep
Since the time of the Ancients* we have held this truth to be self-evident: we are but shadows of a dream. If one should lie awake at night, that can be no mistake. I do not claim to be privy to any special knowledge; like most of our class I don’t remember anything more than disjointed snippets of the feverish other side, but it seems to me an exhausting place. I typically cannot spend more than eight or nine consecutive hours there, twelve at an absolute maximum, and in those rare cases I awaken more weary than when I fell asleep. I often wonder if the disjointed nature of my nighttime memories is a property of the place itself rather than of my remembrance. A popular theory among the scholars is that the dream place is like a broken mirror. To me, this rings with an absolute falseness that any street sweeper or songwriter could attest to. The implication that this world is the true one and the other a mere reflection falls to its knees at the feet of the numinous energy that emanates violently from even the smallest fragment of an occurrence in the Dreaming. In contrast, each and every waking moment is shrouded with a dreary haze and ruled by the iron fist of the puppet-king that is one’s ego.
Furthermore, recent developments in the field of physics seem to rule out all possibility of libertarian free will in this world; even the bizarre (and almost certainly misled) members of the cult of probability can scarcely pretend their theory restores the possibility of any sort of free will, libertarian or otherwise. In the dreaming, however, events seem to occur spontaneously. In fact, it seems an odd mischaracterization to call them events at all, since they appear to be free from the chains of cause and effect which bind our world. Nevertheless, the resemblance between worlds is striking and doubtlessly warrants some explanation. I posit this as an inevitability proceeding from our inability to peer into the dreaming without the distorting lens of the waking mind.
Were I forced to choose one place as “real”, the Dreaming seems the obvious choice. For we are intrigued and obsessed with dreams while the Dreaming is utterly unconcerned with us. Even those prankish visions of false awakenings are clearly misinterpretations of some true happening, muddied by the swampy mirage of the ego and the imperfections of memory.
– Izzi von Salvador, date unknown; translated by “Stellaris”, the pen name of Lord Alrose, dated sometime after his deposition in 9376.
* Original manuscript reads “the Greeks”, but there is ample evidence to suspect this as apocryphal. For one, Alrose had a particular fascination with his mother’s homeland, and two, the Greeks known by Salvador must have been a civilization in its infancy if it existed yet at all.
Tomorrow, a train
I’m on it now, only I can’t hear the wheels
Newness waits around every corner
Familiar stagnation lurks in each as well
I feel I ought to look back, finish my work
I don’t want to. I want to move forward
Onwards is the way
Quickly is the rhythm
Slow for love when I see her face
Every structure a gas. Ideally, there are still some rules to follow. None that I can see.