I DREAMED it was a sunny afternoon and there was a fresh blanket of snow on the ground. I was torn. I wanted to go skiing with Luke, but I also wanted to stay exactly where I was, fast asleep on the sofa.
Knowing me, I knew that if I didn’t wake up immediately I’d spend the rest of the day lounging around, so I stood up like I meant it and poured myself a whiskey. But part of me wasn’t ready to get up yet, and I split into two halves when I stood — a ghost half and a human half. My human half was fast asleep on the sofa still, and my ghost half was floating over my human half, watching my human half sleep. Then I split into thirds, and a third part of me, neither ghost nor human, was hovering over the sofa, observing the whole scenario from a bird’s-eye-perspective. “I’m not in halves,” it dawned on me, “I’m in thirds!” And all at once, I dreamed I understood the sacred mystery of dreaming — dreaming is one big misunderstanding. We think we’re blind when our eyes are closed, but we aren’t. There’s a lot we can still see. When we’re asleep and we see dream visions, those visions aren’t imaginary — they’re actually there. The ladder Jacob dreamed was actually happening when he dreamed it. A crumpled ball of kraft paper appeared from out of nowhere, courtesy my new visual superpower, and hovered three-dimensionally at the level of my eyes — so brown, so skin-rough, so papery. Then I visualized I was riding a bike and — Presto! — I was riding a bike. Then I visualized a bookstore and a large cappuccino. I was really getting the hang of it. When a baby squirrel jumped on my pant leg, I brushed it away with a manila folder.
Knowing me, I knew that if I didn’t wake up immediately I’d spend the rest of the day lounging around, so I stood up like I meant it and poured myself a whiskey. But part of me wasn’t ready to get up yet, and I split into two halves when I stood — a ghost half and a human half. My human half was fast asleep on the sofa still, and my ghost half was floating over my human half, watching my human half sleep. Then I split into thirds, and a third part of me, neither ghost nor human, was hovering over the sofa, observing the whole scenario from a bird’s-eye-perspective. “I’m not in halves,” it dawned on me, “I’m in thirds!” And all at once, I dreamed I understood the sacred mystery of dreaming — dreaming is one big misunderstanding. We think we’re blind when our eyes are closed, but we aren’t. There’s a lot we can still see. When we’re asleep and we see dream visions, those visions aren’t imaginary — they’re actually there. The ladder Jacob dreamed was actually happening when he dreamed it. A crumpled ball of kraft paper appeared from out of nowhere, courtesy my new visual superpower, and hovered three-dimensionally at the level of my eyes — so brown, so skin-rough, so papery. Then I visualized I was riding a bike and — Presto! — I was riding a bike. Then I visualized a bookstore and a large cappuccino. I was really getting the hang of it. When a baby squirrel jumped on my pant leg, I brushed it away with a manila folder.