gloamingdaydream

Unfinished

Last week, I decided to start keeping a dream journal. As soon as I would return from that strange new world of my own conception, I would immediately rush to jot down what little fragments had crossed over with me into reality before they could fade away into the endless oblivion. At times I would awake with nothing but the recollection of, for but a brief moment, having been nothing, my corporeal self having completely vanished for a certain period of time in which the entity that constituted “me” had lost its form. The time dilation in that other dimension proved to be inconsistent, for at times, mere seconds would pass before my physical state pulled me back to a reality where hours had disappeared, a true time skip. Other times, I would exist within the confines of that world for years, slowly reforming every molecule of mine into a replica of my real body, constructing an alternate reality with entirely new laws that would constantly bend and reshape themselves according to the whims of my consciousness, only for it to all come crumbling down at the crack of dawn.

My first entry in that journal involved the Greek Gods, for some odd reason. The dream began with me finding myself trapped within a 2d styled video game environment, shaped according to the myth of a certain popular game that involved Olympus and the underworld. With no particular goal in mind, I strove to escape, only for the landscape to suddenly shift at some point into a classroom with no exits, the board filled with a multitude of complex mathematical equations. The dream did not end there, but what happened next is a mystery to which I have no answers to, as I had awoken into a dazed state and reflexively written it all down into a notebook up until that point where I had attained complete lucidity, allowing the remainder of the dream to dissipate from existence. I tried to make sense of the dream, but unsurprisingly was unable to, especially not with large chunks of it left incomplete with no context to them, so I gave up and vowed not to make such a crucial error the next time I wrote it down, I would have to try and remain in that half conscious state if I were to try and transcribe those surreal events onto a page of this dimension.

I somehow managed to write down the entirety of my second dream, who’s setting was far stranger, taking place entirely in an online context. The vessel that had served as my observer in the first dream had been entirely shaped to resemble the me that existed in reality, to an almost indistinguishable manner. In this dream however, no vessel manifested itself, and I could only communicate with others via online messaging. The dream began with an old friend of mine contacting me, claiming that he knew what I felt before promptly adding me to a group chat of around 70 people who all discussed and debated art. Unpacking this dream was far simpler since much of it had been grounded in reality. That old friend of mine was someone who I had previously gotten into a massive argument with mere months earlier, and we had since never talked or apologized to each other, so I suspected that this dream was rooted in an underlying guilt and desire to make amends, with that group chat acting as a symbolic representation of the art community we had met in and that I had completely cut myself off from.

The third and final dream was by far the longest and most incomprehensible, it felt like an amalgamation of some of my deepest repressions mixing with things I had never consciously acknowledged that were now manifesting within the largest piece of my unconscious dialogue. Oddly enough, transcribing the dream was easy, because even after gaining total lucidity, I hadn’t forgotten any aspect of it at all, it was all firmly ingrained within me. The dream began with me standing on a stage, conversing with someone who identified themselves as “The God of this world”. I could not make out their appearance, for it was a silhouette who’s shape appeared to constantly shift, almost as if it belonged to a dimension that I could neither perceive nor comprehend. Our conversation went as follows:

I then suddenly found myself in a small wooden cabin located in the center of some woods. A small bed, a radio and a television were all the objects that took up space here. I made my way over to the television first, which had been on the floor in the corner of the room, but there were no outlets to plug it into, so it was pretty much useless. Next, I checked the radio, which was in the opposite corner. Although it did turn all, it was once again virtually unusable since all the channels emitted nothing but some static. Turning the radio off and exiting the cabin, I found a straightforward path leading from the cabin straight all the way to a point I couldn’t observe. Having nothing to do, I figured that would be a better option than to roam the woods, so I started to follow the path. It was basically impossible to tell the time though, which lead to a rather frustrating walk, as the end never once seemed to be in sight as I continued to make my way towards a path that stretched out to the horizon, far past the small area that had made itself known to my cautious eye. Nevertheless, I preserved, moving forward for what seemed an eternity since time as a concept seemed far less rigid than it presented itself as in the world of the waking.

But of course, no matter how long the path was, I was bound to reach the end, and so I did, and what had awaited me at the edge of this long, arduous journey was quite literally an edge, the end of the forest. It all ended here, the trees, the roads, the rocks, it simply came to an abrupt stop, as if its creator had gotten lazy and vowed to finish the location later, only to never return and doom it to endless incompletion, leaving a vast hole within it. The thought of jumping in had barely crossed my mind when once again I found myself transported to a completely different location.

A blank, white room with no exits. I sat on the cold, dainty floor, waiting patiently for something to happen, but before I knew it, the walls had closed in nearly half the space the room had started out with. I focused on the walls, realizing that I was trapped as they slowly but surely continued to close in at a steady pace. I desperately inspected the floor and walls in an attempt to find a hidden switch or an exit that would bail me out of this situation, to no avail. Thus, I sat back down in the center of the room, awaiting my inevitable fate. A high pitch sound rang out from a direction I could not pinpoint, it felt like it was echoing from everywhere at once and simultaneously from nowhere. Unable to determine whether that noise was a product of my imagination, I clasped my ears shut momentarily, to which the noise disappeared completely, even after I had unplugged them.

My attention then turned back towards the walls, who now appeared to move towards me at a much slower pace than earlier, as the more progress they made, the more they seemed to slow down. With less than a quarter of the original room’s space left, it almost seemed as if the walls had stopped closing in entirely. Hours now seemed to pass before I noticed even the slightest advancement. Suddenly, a strange book appeared right next to one of the walls. I had scanned the room multiple times and confirmed that it was totally empty except for me, and it would have been impossible to miss something that stood out as much as that book, so the reasonable assumption was that the book had simply spawned in out of thin air. The cover was completely indescribable: Filled with a singular colour from front to back, one I had never seen before and that could not possibly exist, as to even attempt to describe it would be antithetical to its material, or lack thereof: an Anti-colour, the complete lack of matter, almost tearing a hole in the fabric of reality. Not even pure pitch black oblivion or an empty white void would come close to the lonely energy radiating out of this book.

I hesitantly opened it and attempted to read it, but none of it made even a shred of sense, completely ignoring time, space, and harmony that is afforded by the medium of literature. Instead, every letter, every word, every sentence of this book ignored the last, leading to a formless, unstructured mess leaking out. I tried to make out any sort of pattern or rhythm, but it was of no use. There was no way to even tell if a language was being used at all. And yet, despite that, my eyes lingered on each page, completely fixated on something that existed within these pages. At some point, I stretched out my legs only for them to collide with the walls that had now only left enough space for me to read and breathe, any other movement would be impossible at this point. Knowing I did not have enough time to read as much as I desired, I ripped out a bunch of pages, shoved them into my mouth, and swallowed them. I rushed to consume the entire book before I could be crushed to pieces.

With each page, my mind seemed to expand, taking in a plethora of visuals, overloading my consciousness with a near infinite amount of information. A house overlooking the seaside on top of a cliff, a frozen tundra assailed by a snowstorm, a sailor lost at sea on a small boat, observing the sunset, a king betrayed by his knights, a drunk man falling off a ladder, plummeting to his death, a well of infinite water, a dead technocrat. Hundreds of these images shaped themselves simultaneously, within that very moment. The walls continued to close in, on the verge of crushing me to atoms. Closer yet closer, the end suffocated me, the loud silence being overwhelmed by every breath taken in that small space. I curled up, attempting to delay the inevitable, but it was no use.

I closed my eyes, waiting for the end, but it never came. Finally opening them, I was greeted by a scenery that completely contrasted the claustrophobic elements of the white room. I laid on the park’s grass, moonlight shining down on me, a small curvy hill overlooking a small lake, or perhaps a mere drop of water in the eyes of the world. Footsteps lit up the world all around me, people whose faces I could not discern, their presence breathing life into the hollowness that had creeped up in the depths of my heart. Night turned to day, the sun’s rays covering the park like a lantern for a brief instant, before turning back off almost immediately. Right there, in the middle of the lake, stood a woman with long white hair. Her shoes danced at the tip of the water, walking slowly over it. As she stood in the center of the lake, the woman turned back to stare at me who had been observing from a distance. And then, she faded to dust. I rushed towards where she had been, but the lake and the park both disappeared, leaving me to run across a  barren wasteland. I looked up and realized the moon had left the sky, with only the tiny infinite stars shining light in the sky of darkness. I ran and ran and ran, unable to see where I was headed, unable to see where I had been coming from. I sprinted towards the unknown, and finally reached the edge of the world where I had reached earlier. 

I stared down to the eye of the world, and the eye stared back at me. That mere, irretrievable second of contact caused the end of this world. The barren wasteland collapsed, and I fell upwards to a familiar park that also shattered, once again leaving me to drop upwards, colliding into the ceiling of that dreaded room, which also dissolved, leaving not the slightest bit of matter behind. I could feel myself being siphoned upwards, briefly encountering every unintentional creation of mine, until finally I dropped into the theater, this time sitting in a spectator seat. The stage lights shone down upon a small notebook. Looking around, I realized that figure was no longer here, so I got up and made my way up on stage. I picked the notebook up, flipped to a random page, and read the following:

“A blank, white room with no exits. I sat on the cold, dainty floor, waiting patiently for something to happen, but before I knew it, the walls had closed in nearly half the space the room had started out with. I focused on the walls, realizing that I was trapped as they slowly but surely continued to close in at a steady pace. I desperately inspected the floor and walls in an attempt to find a hidden switch or an exit that would bail me out of this situation, to no avail.”

The more I read, the more familiar that scene had seemed to me, until I realized that this notebook was narrating the events of this dream. It was at that point that I had come to realize that all that had occurred up to this point was just that: a mere dream. It had felt so real, so inescapable, a strange feeling had been weighing me down the entire time, as if my life had been in danger. I quickly flipped to the last page of the notebook, and read the following:

“It had felt so real, so inescapable, a strange feeling had been weighing me down the entire time, as if my life had been in danger. I quickly flipped to the last page of the notebook, and read the following:”

The notebook ended there. There was one more page, but it was blank. But somewhere in my heart, I knew something was wrong. My breath quickened, I looked around, but nothing was left. This theater was a crossroads, and I was running out of time. I had a decision to make, but I did not know what. There were no questions asked, and I had no answers. I skimmed the notebook again, reliving my curious adventure, searching for clues that would be of aid to me. The cabin, the woods, the room, the park, the edge of the world, the eye. It was all connected, it meant something, but I did not know what. How long did I have left? This world was soon coming to an end, the apocalypse. The eye of the world would soon stop observing, and I knew once that happened, everything would disappear.

The eye was keeping this world alive. Everything it observed was real, and everything it ceased to observe collapsed, and disappeared into oblivion. I knew this was a dream, and yet I did not want to let go, I could not let go.  Now, more than ever, I hung on for dear life. The theater at last began to crumble, I had nowhere left to run, nowhere left to hide. The ceiling was torn out, the seats sucked out, the time had come.The stage cracked open and fell apart, leaving me to plunge right through into a gigantic black hole.