M is for Myg

dandellion was musing about dreams. I thought this: Dreams tell us a truth that we can’t see — or stomach — in reality. I am saying nothing new. The dream is the truth. Ipso facto, reality is the fantasy. I saw myself from within myself, but then it was kind of a movie starring me and Robert De Niro. “Hey, you’re pretty good, kid. You never acted in a picture before? Huh, whaddya know!”

As always, our enemies will insist the opposite in their propaganda sheets: they will say dreams are only dreams and reality is, well, reality. What obvious nonsense. Storm the barricades! The one where Christ comes down from the cross and asks me to guess what’s in his hand. A mouse? A hedgehog? A little silver bell? Mother called us home for dinner.

I was back in college, in the library, except it was tiled like an indoor swimming pool; students strolled naked through the steamy aisles. I approached the currency exchange booth and presented the clerk with a canvas bag full of leaves and twigs. “I need rupees,” I stammered. “I don’t speak Hindi.” She fluttered her eyes.

Take a look around you. What makes it make sense is fantasy. The hallway was too narrow to fit through. Suddenly I could fly. I needed directions to the museum. “There was no moon last night.”

Don’t believe the propaganda; they say it so you won’t be looking. “Never mind your dreams!” Then they will make our dreams and fantasies, not us. They mix them in factories and slip them into things: those shoes you bought, the subway map, those red envelopes from Netflix. I was running from the Nazis. I tried to hide under the couch. My gun malfunctioned! I tried to call for help, but the battery on my cell phone had died. Would they spare me if they knew my father was in the Luftwaffe?

Look, it comes down to this. I’m realistic. So I demand the impossible. Sometimes I demand six impossible things before breakfast. That’s what we came for, isn’t it?

This entry was posted on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 10:17 am and is filed under Esteban.