Dreamer

You see, then, I was no dreamer. You awoke from sleep without the confusion and without the desperation of trying to remember a night-thought. Dreaming wasn't a common thing for me. Things were the way they were. Why would one waste time "dreaming"? Even daytime fantasizing was looked down upon. It never got you anywhere. 1

I went about my days very in-tune with my physical surroundings. I could feel the wind before it blew. I could walk with the silence of the dead, but quieter. I could tell the time, the upcoming weather, the emotions of the person standing next to me. I breathed with the expansion of the universe. The stars, the trees, animals, spoke to me with a language that consisted not of words, but of glances, touches, and sighs. Both the sunlight and the moonlight became warmer and cooler to suit me. They nearly bowed to my very aura. 2

I lived this reality and no other. I saw everything that chose to present itself to the world and imagined nothing. I sometimes sat and watched. I wallowed in the pure openness of it all. Nothing was hidden and all was tangible and sweet. 3

One afternoon, as I sat on the couch I had never dreamt of having, I saw one of my smaller dogs, the Shiba, jump up onto a stool near the large west-facing window so she could watch the outside world go by. She layed down and rested her head on the window sill and I felt her eyes scan the yard that we owned. Slowly her lids shut, and a patch of sunlight drifted across the room until it rested on her, covering her silky golden body. Her tail uncurled in accepting trust. 4

My body tensed and a moment later the leaves on the trees outside danced and pointed south. Then they relaxed again and I relaxed again. The dog didn't expect this movement, and her eyes opened before she came down from her post. I observed how every muscle in her body moved as she stretched out against the wooden floor. Laying down again, her eyes soon closed and there was a quiet that hadn't been heard by my ears in quite a while. I took a deep breath. 5

After some time, I noticed her legs begin to twitch. Then she barked ever so slightly. Her legs were now moving in a rhythmic almost running motion. She barked again. I suddenly realized what was going on. She was dreaming. The dog was doing this thing that I had so long been forbidden to do. 6

That was my changing moment. The short amount of time used to create that singular experience completely changed everything I knew. 7

I began to slowly retreat into my mind. I sat around in my home just thinking. I didn't notice when the first constellation could be seen. I wasn't sure of the feelings of other people; their minds were so strange. I hardly believed a building existed when I first saw it, especially when the building was a large one. Whenever I watched the world happen, I couldn't focus. I would witness the first five minutes of any event or transaction as if it was a play, all fake and all rehearsed. In the minutes that followed, I would lose all interest and I would make up my own dialogues. The characters would so change from their original states that they wouldn't have been recognized by anyone but their creator.  8

I myself changed thusly on a daily basis. My speech patterns altered themselves, at times without my knowledge. Finally, the world outside of my dreams, my mind, my imagination, seemed to fall off the edge of this realm. All the details that I had been so in-tune with earlier now no longer registered at all. Yet I was never alone. I had everything I could ever want, and I actually believed it was all there.9