Dream

"So go on, Love, find a new direction."
Mayday Parade

                             ~

I keep having this recurrent impression that all this is a collection of interwoven dreams. And it seems to me that every person I know really has no idea what's going on; they don't fully understand the story beneath the dream. Meanwhile, I sit here watching them, surrounded by mirror-like holograms, gateways through which I convince myself that I understand their dreams. Now, knowing that we're all the same in some sense, I wonder what kind of dream I'm living in, and what kind of life I dream of. I do, however, know that if I live enough to become really old, I'll have plenty of stories to tell about all these mirrors around me, and like most or perhaps all people, I will try to subtly mention how I played a nice small role in the lives of the people I loved; or maybe I'll keep that part to myself to be able to sleep at night.

Perhaps the motive behind these words is to tell myself that I'm a mirror too, that I'm not invisible and insignificant, that I'm neither broken glass nor darkened dust breathing through the projections.

Either way, for now, I sit and watch, stuck between the void and the light, hoping that the heroes around me will rise above their struggles, and that those I no longer have the chance to see find love and faith and, one day, themselves.

All these wishes upon a dream, they vanish in the blankness of my thoughts, slightly beyond the numbness of my nerves. They dissolve at the edge of the mirrors before they reach my personal space - the one I refer to as a castle when I want to compensate for my lack of confidence and as a fortress when I want to hide my trust issues.

All these wishes upon a dream and, still, last night, she asked me to make a wish. And she had no idea what I wished for but for some reason it made her smile that I breathed death into the candle, probably because she sees life in the little things.

All in all, it was a beautiful day with wonderful people. If there were a detached narrator, he would probably focus on the view from the rooftop. But for me, the real moment was in a subway that didn't know our names around strangers who probably thought expensive brands could make their names and bodies more valuable. The real moment was timeless, and independent of space, and it knocked at the door of my fortress.

In all honesty, it took me a while to understand that the world I live in is mostly about decisions, sometimes about actions and rarely about words, that when you read someone else's words, you only understand what you wish to understand, that all decisions are real actions yet some actions are a waste of time, that all actions are meaningful words but some words are a waste of breath. And regardless of what I say now, you probably have no idea what I really mean because whoever you are, you're just like me, stuck in a dream that you don't understand. Yours is perhaps in a painting that you can't draw yet while mine is in a book written in an ancient language that I don't understand.

In any case, whatever you choose to name your painting, be sure to figure out the name of the artist(s) first.

All those wishes upon a dream and I sit and watch them float around me. I slowly watch them die just as slowly as I realize that I don't deserve them.

Sometimes, the dream deserves a better dreamer. Sometimes, dreamers die because their dreams become nightmares. Sometimes, the dreamer and the dream don't know that they're the same person. Sometimes, they just want a good night's sleep and sometimes they just need to wake up. And sometimes, time kills them both with a single shot to the heart. But sometimes, in a flashing moment, you understand that your dream is a mirror, and you wish for it to be unbreakable. And that is how a dream triumphs over time and destroys it in a single, eternal moment of love, most real, most true.

Once upon a dream, I folded the night and my heart into the wings of a paperplane. 
Once upon a moment, the plane flew and disappeared in your eyes.
And one day, the morning sunlight will seep through the windows and fall upon the covers covered with our scent. And my eyes will be open and yours will be closed. And the paperplane will reappear - at least in my imagination - and the wings of night and heart will unfold. And that's when I'll tell you the story behind the wishes upon the dream.

I'd start at the beginning, where most things usually end:

"Once upon a time, I met this girl [...]"
And once I say that, you'll smile because you want me to know that you're only pretending to be asleep.

Then I'll wake up.

In the symphony of silence, we remember moments.
Yet, in the melodies of noise, time makes us forget.

                              ~

"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."
Albus Dumbledore

Courage

"I went to sleep a poet, and I woke up a fraud."
Fall Out Boy

~

A downside of living inside your head is that it takes you a while to understand what is really going on. And though being detached from reality isn't the worst state to be in, it sadly does lead to a terrible place, one where it is very hard to look at life - or at the mirror - from a perspective untainted with disappointment.

The upside of the state of disconnection is, however, not to be underestimated. Over time, genuine solitude allows you to become immune to everything. It allows you to observe the fake and ugly world without knowing that you're a part of it. It also allows you to see that what you loved and believed in slowly drowned while you were staring at the sunset, writing poetry about childish dreams. Eventually, you find yourself writing about how people turn from strangers to memories, memories to ghosts, ghosts to ideas, ideas to words, and then, somehow, from meaningful words to meaningless moments of silence. Like this one.

All it takes is a single moment of disconnection, to see things for how they really are, and not for how we want them to be. And there it is, all around you, falling apart in a mind-shattering instant.

Insecure eyes. Subtle imitation. Circular repetition. Delusional ego, there you go. If you don't follow, read that again.

It is perhaps the fear of being undefined that most defines us. Meanwhile, in a world of endless labeling, we hopelessly attempt to define ourselves, over and over and over, pretending to know what's going on, believing our own lies every once in a while. And it works, for a while. It works because we can relatively breathe easy with the mask on, during the day, and at night, we just sleep and forget how much we hate what's under the mask.

The thing is that, as our age increases, we learn to slightly alter the sound of our ideas, unknowingly making them, obviously, unsound ideas, shedding light on certain places and darkness on others. Slowly and steadily, the lies take over you. And in time, you become a lie, a fake. Then, you wake up, hopefully.

Result. Some people spend their lives focused on manipulating everyone and everything around them, as if spilling black paint on a coloring set will change the colors of the pencils. Others waste their lives waiting for someone or something that only exists in their imagination, as if there were a mythical creature or prize that has the special ability of turning shit into gold.

Conclusion. Neither spend your life nor waste it. Share it, instead.

The disconnection formerly mentioned is thus, for the sake of sharing, bound, now, to become a connection. So, deluded self, kindly be brave enough to break the walls you've built around your heart and mind. Be brave enough to risk them both again because some people are worth it.

In fear, we run to escape our own soul.
In courage, we run to find it.

~

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” 
E.E. Cummings

Frisson

“Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.” 
Orson Scott Card

~

Silent threads of virtual ink stream in waves of darkened light toward bright eyes. And while the mind seeks to project a meaningful melody onto multifaceted words, I gaze into the friendly night in my room with my eyes open because I know that if I close them, I will see you.

I've long developed the mechanism of transforming intense feelings into concepts. And it usually resembles a giant water-wave fearlessly rushing toward me, only to find itself turned into dust, polishing the multiple sandcastles around my fortress. And yet, there you were, moving with profound grace, unknowingly leaving me out of breath every time you smiled or laughed. The supposedly invincible kingdom of thought has since become as lost and drowned as Atlantis and I honestly don't care because I just want to see you again.

In any case, it was dark and slightly chilly and I was settled on the grass trying to ignore the beautiful moon even though it was clearly playing hide-and-seek with me, trying to make me win, though it knows that I know that it knows how clouds become brighter when it hides behind them. Regardless, the scene was one of wonderful harmony as a mostly soft wind, soul-gazing stars, ancient trees and nostalgic music in my earphones all waited for you to providentially sit next to me and talk. Just talk. But you didn't.

So tell me, do you even know that you are Magic? Do you know that I can't think of metaphors when I picture you in my head because every element in my imagination momentarily disappears? Do you know that I just laughed at myself because I remembered how I childishly smiled when I saw you running in the rain? And now it's worse because I'm not sure whether the scene qualifies as 'heavenly' or 'divine' or simply both.

There are infinite questions and timeless answers, multiple worlds and recurrent dreams, half-written novels and wands at the ready. And then there are the stories that converge as our fingers interlace. And right then and there would come the ending and the ending would never end, because all infinity would be starstruck, and time would henceforth be suspended once the worlds and dreams dormant within my chest get to feel the rhythm of your heart.

And these words that run through me ceaselessly fail but that's okay because images of you are there too and they're interminably beautiful.

Now, moments of magic have always eluded me in a similar manner to how I transcended those that were tragic. And for most of my eventful life, I felt stuck, not knowing what to say or what to feel, how to go or how to heal. Yet, the irrational has happened and I somehow sensed a wind of unknown nature storming into my indifferent eyes.

A fire inside me has awakened.

A fire inside me has awakened and all I can think about is how it would feel to fall asleep around a campfire with you by my side.

~

“When people of similar frequencies come together, output is not a simple sum of individual work, but exponential. In science we term this phenomenon as resonance. Output at this stage is beyond any logical limit.” 
Ravindra Shukla