Preface
I woke to find myself in a dream, and in the dream I said what I said, clearly enough and to another and another, although I cannot recollect if in the dream I actually saw anyone’s face, for I might have been talking only to myself in everything I said to another . . .
I
I imagine that the only way to conclude for you is to present what I say as if I were God; seeing, hearing and knowing at once.
II
What has he said? Has he said how difficult it is to imagine that we have ways to know we see, ways to think we can imagine we understand what we once had known, but have forgotten . . . forgotten.
III
To forget has always been more selfish than forgiving. Giving’s more generous than getting, most of the time, anyway.
IV
What I say and how I feel are often not the same thing?
V
You do understand what it means to understand, no? You see what the word says, not only what it means, right?
Epilogue
I woke to find myself in my room. It was dark. The street light blared through the window covered only partly by curtains, not having shut them entirely as I have been in the habit of doing, the street light acting as a night light in case I wake in the middle of the night having to go to the bathroom. I would not like to bang my toe as there is not the broadest of spaces between the wall and the bed when I get up.
Other reasons might become apparent. I have not thought of them yet, I could say, as we are always in the habit of adding a carefully plotted ‘yet’ to certain statements, our love of predicting the future coupled with or determined by our deference to the dogmas of empiricism, our belief that we can predict and of course thus determine the future, as in love with one kind of determinism after another as we are, thus displacing or supplanting the Self . . . I had a friend back in college who used to like to say that the ego was the bull’s eye of the Self, and both of us did like to capitalize the ‘S’ in Self. Why we did not capitalize the ‘e’ in ego we might have said was because the ego is surrounded by the Self, that the Self is encompassing of the ego and must be both more than and inclusive of the ego . . . why do we make something more out of this by choosing to translate Freud’s “Ich” with the Latin “ego” and not the English “I.” You that changes everything, but then all theories are only fictions, correct? What does it mater what we do with freud since his intentions have no bearing on what we do or should do or might do or could do or will continue to do . . . to dream a dream of being awake in a dream you are dreaming–I like the play within the play in Hamlet; I like the narrative within the narrative within the narrative complete with dialogue in each in the text of Wuthering Heights.
The Falling Leaf Review 