WAKING DREAM

Did you ever wake up in the middle of a dream – and realize that, even though you seem to be fully aware of everything, you're still stuck inside that dream?
It happened to me. I'm still inside that dream – or maybe the dream is actually the real world – and all the time I thought I was awake someone else was actually dreaming for me. Or maybe there's no such thing as 'dreams' at all – just many, many worlds we cross each night, so many that we never seem to cross the same one twice.
I will die soon – or, at any rate, I will be banished from this place. It seems I've challenged a force which should have been left alone, a force beyond dreams and realities, a force that is anywhere and everywhere. It sees everything. It knows everything.
In the reality I came from, I believe such a force would be called by the name of 'God'.
I rest inside a spiral staircase now. The staircase is upside-down; then again, you can hardly ever tell which way is 'up' and which way 'down'. Gravity has no hold here. I could walk up to the clouds, one step at a time, and make nothing of it. I have such a power; this has become my dream.
But somehow, that force beyond all realities doesn't seem to like it when I take things too far.
When I first found myself trapped in this reality-dream, I was frightened. I was alone, with too many things around me that my fully-awakened mind could not even begin to comprehend. I saw a striped couch chasing a butterfly. I saw a snake knot its own body and change into a grotesque bow to hang from a princess' braid. I saw half a hand wiping tears away from a halved face. All this, and much, much more.
I turn a page. The sound reverberates strangely in the silence, and small fountains of colors emerge here and there. I have decided to leave this written mockery of a confession for anyone else who might stumble here – unlikely though that may be.
I look at the colors for a few moments before resuming. I like the colors. I brought them; the world had been bleak and dull until I arrived here.
The first time I realized that there was something inside me – something akin to a godly power – was when I realized how much I missed colors. This reality-dream was all grays. I found myself picturing a rainbow cat – and there it was, purring and wagging its tail and rubbing against my bare feet. I was intrigued. Did that mean I could summon anything by simply picturing it in my mind?
I tried to think of something else. The first thing that came to mind was a snake – and there it was, gigantic and orange and ready to swallow me whole. I closed my eyes and cowered in fear. When I opened them again, both snake and cat were gone.
I tried once more, this time picturing a tree. A simple, harmless tree. It sprang to life from the ground below my feet, so sudden that I ran a few steps back, amazed. It grew taller than any tree I'd ever seen, its leaves glistening emerald green, its branches reaching all the way to the blackened sky.
I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, the tree was also gone.
So that's how it goes, I thought to myself. Things would just appear and fade away. Was there more to it? I wondered. I closed my eyes and summoned the image of an old locket that my grandmother used to wear. It materialized in my outstretched hand. I opened my eyes, took a deep breath – then closed them again.
The locket remained.
That was the catch.
I spent some time reveling in this new-found power. I made things appear, multiply and disappear. After a while, I got tired of it. I closed my eyes, and everything went away – even the locket that I'd been holding on to all the while.
And then, I slept. A short, dreamless slumber, the way I imagined death itself would be. When I awoke, the reality-dream had shifted into a new set of delusions – and still I could tell it was the same world. Except for one thing. In some places, I noticed, the colors from my demiurgic orgy had remained.  
That was when the first warning came. Suddenly, the air around me became thick – so thick that I could almost feel it wrapping around my throat and sneaking deep down inside my lungs. This might have lasted for a few seconds, a few hours or even days. When it went away, the words resounded crystal-clear in my mind.
Enjoy your dream. Don't go too far.
This was a dream after all. And what was 'going too far' supposed to mean? Where had those words come from?
Looking back, I think my mistake was wanting to know more, wanting to know too much.
But first and foremost, I wanted to know whether it was day or night; it seemed this place knew nothing of time. I wished a sky into being, and in that sky, I made a sun, a rainbow and a moon. I knew they'd be there and they'd move as I expected them to. This was my power. This had become my dream.
Days passed. The world was unpredictable, ever-changing. My sun somehow gained the face of a clock. My moon spawned small, orange suns of her own. My rainbow turned into a seven-color ribbon and was blown away by a gentle wind. But if I looked close enough, they were still my rainbow, my moon and my sun. My creations. Mine!
It was then that I figured what 'going too far' might have meant.
The world. I was changing the world.
As I thought this, the force that had made its presence known before returned a second time. It came just as sudden – a little stronger, a bit more demanding. And the words made their way back as well.
Enjoy your dream. Did that mean I was welcomed here?
Don't go too far. Could it have been that the force – that entity – had actually been here before? Had it created this place as a world of its own, and was now granting me a fraction of its power for some reason? Did it want me to leave things as they were? If so, wouldn't the whole experience be null and void from the start?
A host of questions came to my mind. I pushed them back.
“Who are you?”
I might have screamed, whispered or just thought the words.
The darkness receded. The answer came into my mind with maddening clarity.
I am all.
Then, it was all gone. I felt naked, empty, cold. I cowered in the middle of the void, like the frightened child I had suddenly become. I think I prayed.
And then, just as sudden and inexplicable, things were just as they had been before this strange interlude. My sun-clock ticked its way across the sky. My moon chased the smaller suns.
What could it all have meant?
I wished for a quiet place to think. I thought about the ocean – and there I was, standing in the middle of the waves, with the ilusions of this world stretching far beyond what I thought to be the horizon. A limping rat scurried past me and dug a hole into the water. A flying rose blew a kiss to a heart-shaped strawberry cake some distance away.
If I was not to change anything, how could I live here? Was I supposed to somehow find my way back to the place that, in all sense, would be my 'true' reality?
I wanted to know. I strode across the waves. I pondered. I struggled. I screamed.
Finally, a powerful urge of letting go swept over me. It seemed I was to be powerless after all. Very well then; I would just ride this fantasy and see where it carried me in the end.
It was then that I heard the laugh. It was deep and slow, so faint that I could easily have mistaken it for a wave breaking against a rocky shore.
You seek to know.
Of course I did.
The laughter came again.
Indulge yourself.
I braced myself to fall into that darkness again, waited breathlessly, waited until my rainbow-ribbon brushed past me and landed on the water beyond with a gentle swish.
Then, suddenly, I felt like my mind was being torn apart from within. Thousands, tens of thousands of words rushed into my awareness all at once. I had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. And so, I faced them all at once, trying to take things in one at a time,holding on to that small spark we each call 'self'.
That's how I came to learn about everything. About the dreams, realities and the force beyond. The force that, simply put, was all. It was that force that had given birth to this reality, as well as countless others. And it was that same force that had become envious of the many worlds and gods that it had spawned, and was now seeking to amuse itself – with me. I was a pawn – and yet I was God. This world had embraced me as its dreamer. I was destined to live alone – but I was free to dream as many people as I pleased – so long as they did not hear my voice, or see my face or know me in any other way than through the words of prophets and the truth of miracles. I was God – and I was destined to live alone.
Days turned to months, and finally I dreamed the ones who would have been the world's Adam and Eve. It didn't go too well. In the end, Eve rode away on a two-headed horse, and poor Adam was left to chase the ribbon-rainbow and contemplate the passing of time on the small sun-clocks that the moon had given birth to every now and then. In the end, I made him go back to nothing. I haven't seen Eve since she first vanished; I'm guessing that she's still traveling the world on her two-headed horse.
After Adam was gone, I began to grow lonely.
In the end, I made up my mind. I will commit the sin, so long as I could be granted but a few moments of feeling another's warmth. I will dream her, just as I dreamed Adam and Eve. She will come out of the sea, lay her head in my lap and tell me how much she'd been longing to see me. I will take her hand – and let the Nothing take us both together. No-one will have ever been more grateful.
I contemplate this for a moment, and cringe. Soon, I will be a fallen God. No matter. I know that I will have deserved my fate.

Osaka, December 21st | | For T
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