dreamworld

The dream of the world is the world.

I have the amazing ability-say some-to fall asleep at will. At least during the day, that is. Butt hat is really just all the sleeplessness that is carried over in my body from the previous night. I put my head on the pillow but don't really sleep, just wander in and out of different rooms, speaking different languages, settling old scores. There is a thin shaft of light from another room that remains with me throughout the night; it is like a tall, elegant door. A few of the high cupboard doors are flung open and gaze down at me with their wild, dark eyes.

The clock, getting slower with every passing day, stands as if it is above my head, examining me. I can read it in the dark or know instinctively what the time is by simply raising my head. Before looking at its blank face I can read its thoughts.

I wake up feeling tired, wondering if I ever really slept. But I look forward to the morning, to the weak, grey light, because this means I can sleep, find an hour's worth of rest, like the last sip of a drink in a bottle. My left shoulder aches for some mysterious reason. I am too tired to run any more. You wonder what it would be like to sleep like a saint, or like that day labourer you saw the other day, the one who exhausted himself during the day as he clawed out a living, digging deep down into the dust and mud with heavy implements, digging down in a hole which was up to his hips. Or the sleep of a child. You intuitively feel that if everyone could sleep like a child then most of the problems would disappear. There is something holy about that sleep.

A day passes without really talking to anyone and so it too seems like a dream. 

Pessoa...it says "like nothing else" on the cover but he sounds like Walser, a hyper-sensitive Walser. Craftsmanship: tell it, tell it slant.

My course continues. The lights are always dimmed down and the four or five students sit there wondering to themselves who this ghost-like person is. I realize I'm not really in the classroom-or I've trained myself in this great disappearing act, this great art of taking leave, of speaking without meaning anything. Not that they'd notice the difference. I quietly enter the dark room with its fuzzy light, its silent walls and think I've stepped into a morgue, a twighlight zone.

Faqir tells me, in an all-knowing matter-of-fact kind of way: don't worry, when you're fifty it will all be clearer. There will be no indecision because you can't do anything to alter the course your life has taken anyway. Great! The mathematical necessity of it is devoid of any charm. The fake wisdom of old age.

Fernando, you are a dark one...

'To cease, to be unknown and external, the stirring of branches in remote avenues,..and the whole indistinct world of gardens at night...To cease, to end, once and for all, but yet to survive in another form, as the page of a book, a loose lock of hair, ..insignificant footsteps on the fine gravel on the curve of a path, the last twist of smoke high above a village as it falls asleep, the whip of the waggoner stopped by the road in the morning...'