A dream is another life — dreams, many other lives, in fact. We find ourselves in alien landscapes when we dream that somehow feel familiar — like visiting a town whose buildings have all been torn down and rebuilt, but the roads are still the same. Why do we dream? It is as if we are so used to being somewhere and doing something that the mind makes up for the inactivity of our bodies with activity in the mind. Perhaps we are not satisfied merely with the plain black or blank of sleep. Perhaps we miss having a world so much, when we sink deep enough into that death-like state, that we make one up of our own — a life supplement.
There are many theories about why we dream and what we dream, but we can't get a consensus among these "experts". A man's wisdom extends only to his own breath, and even his breath is a mystery to him. In my madness, I imagined that the people I saw, the cartoons of people living and dead — I believed that I had connected to the place where we all go when we dream. That was one of my theories, at least, that we all traveled to a certain place — a dreamtime — when we slipped into the dream. But no, not these days. I don't believe that there is some "connection mysterium" joining all mankind through some unknown medium.
I remember my favorite dream; I think I was fourteen or so. I remember I could fly, in perfect control of my vertical as well as my horizontal. I never dreamed it again, though, never quite the same thing. Some dreams are like that, I think: the only chance we get to experience magic.
