Fever Dream

I do not often dream.

I am told that this is not the case, and in reality I am simply forgetting my dreams, but I am only relaying my personal view. In the rare case when I experience something other than formless, shapeless sleep, I can remember very clearly the fact that I had experienced something other than monotonous waking life, though not necessarily the contents of the dream itself.

The few dreams that I remember have often been very narrative-based, and usually very uninteresting or unimaginative compared to the dreams of others. Most consist of me following my waking routine up until the point when I once again wake up, in my bed. I often wonder whether they are indicative of an empty and unimaginative self, someone used to routine. I hypothesize that this reason is why I enjoy reading and playing games as much as I do: immersing myself in a completely different story, whether it be of someone else’s hand or of my tool-assisted hand, is an effective form of escapism.

Escape from what? From the walls of my macroscope, of course. It’s ironic. Though I tend to my schedule, much of my time relaxing is spent removing myself from it in mind and spirit. It’s partly why I enjoy learning, about the world around me and the people that inhabit it, about the different laws and mechanics that govern the universe-the most advanced simulation I have seen yet, about whatever nonsensical idea happens to possess me in the moment.

But looking into my dreams is like looking into a faded and cracked mirror, one I would rather avoid. Scarcely was the Modern Prometheus so put off by its own reflection as I seem to be. Am I so narcissistic to be in denial of my own flaws, that all my innocuous dreams turn into nightmares after the fact? Am I simply trying to remain a mystery even to myself, as a failsafe method to ensure that there is always some unknown for me to discover? Do I forget my dreams because they are unbearable? Or maybe it is simply that my brain does not function like any other, as it is with the rest of humanity?

Maybe it is true that I do not dream, and that, in order to make up for that, I try almost desperately to make my waking life as interesting as possible. Maybe it is something above nature, and some strange explanation needs to be considered, like the possibility that I, rather then going to sleep as others do, simply turn my body off every night, experiencing a sort of death. Or maybe it is something mundane: my poor memory is nothing new to me, and while I tend to remember facts and concepts quite strongly, I seem to let memories and experiences slip by like water through my clasped hands. Regardless of why, this lack does not seem to cause me any real problems besides that of disappointment. Or so I hope. 

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The void is empty. Its blackness is all-consuming, and I am a part of it, as far as I can tell. No body to differentiate where I end and where it begins. I look around, but everything is indistinguishable, nothing more but more of the same. Words are senseless here, with only as much meaning as I give them. Time does not pass here. Space does not exist here. There is no light to set apart the darkness. No sound to break the silence, though I suspect that even if there were one, I would not be able to hear it. Void has no ears, after all. It strikes me how ignorant I feel, how blind beyond blind I am, to see only this and nothing else, and in response I try and manifest myself, or, more accurately, a self. Nothing. I try to will something into existence, but nothing happens. I imagine the void laughs at my attempts to create, but it is uncaring, a heavy blanket of smothering apathy. I subside. This is only a dream, after all, and it will not do any harm to me. At least, that is what the faintest of my memories seem to be saying. They are the only connection I have to a world beyond this, and I grasp firmly to them, faded as I am. Slowly, suddenly, something changes. Everything, as I sense it, fragments. Shards like glass pieces sliding past each other, cracks like broken jade spreading. It fragments, and shifts apart.

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“I think the thing that I’m most afraid of is the cold, or, more accurately, being cold. Not cold as in temperature, though that’s how I best imagine it. Not cold as in dead, either. I have some fear of death, but that’s mostly fear of the unknown. Nobody really knows death until they die, you follow? The type of cold I fear is best expressed as a lack of something. Lack of what, you might ask, perhaps becoming more and more frustrated with how vague I’m being. I’m sorry, but I can’t exactly describe it in such a way that you’d fully understand, and I’m really trying to prioritize that. I don’t want you to walk away with something false, after all. It’s just-how do I put this-you know how people are sometimes described as having sparks or some sort of fire inside them? You know, with their eyes ‘lighting up’ and everything. That feeling of driving and being driven, of being fully in control and paradoxically watching your life play out on a screen in front of you. When you write, it’s the Muse that whispers in your ears. When you think, it’s everything snapping into place that much faster, your mind’s eye being that much clearer. And it inspires others too, melting off the ice and cold in them. The easiest way to see it, in my experience, is to get someone talking about whatever they’re passionate about, especially in an environment when they feel like they won’t be judged, though ‘seeing it’ might just be restricted to me (I wouldn’t really know how other people experience it, after all). I think what I’m most afraid of is not feeling that. Like at all. I feel it in me sometimes, but I can’t expect it to stick around all the time, can I? Most of the time, I feel it in other people. Echoes of it, more accurately, and usually with people I feel close to. I hate it when I can’t feel that in me or in the people around me.”

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Colors appear. I’m not sure when they started, but at this point, its turned into a psychedelic tidal wave. They don’t seem to have any sort of rhyme or reason, and seem to be placed without any regard for the colors around them. To be completely honest, it seems a little garish. Many of them clash horribly with each other, and the gradient descent from neon yellow to mauve gives me a headache rather than look even slightly appealing to the eye. Everything is still fragmented, but the colors bleed through, creating an interesting sort of symphony, albeit jarred. They pulsate and move slowly, reminiscent of water streams. Oddly, the colors keep a slight distance from me, as if by touching me, they will cease to exist. I empty my mind and meditate on them for some time. It is much easier here, and grants me unexpected clarity, from which I anchor myself into this place, and eventually lose myself in the colors.

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    The aging woman lived in the middle of the forest, in a ramshackle hut that cracked during the frequent storms, yet never gave up and collapsed. The villagers in the nearby town treated her with reverence when she deigned to make an appearance, but spoke of her in hushed whispers and fearful looks when they thought she wasn’t listening. People like her, though, often perceive far more than they ever let on.

Not that she’d ever addressed such baseless rumors. If she were truly a witch of sorts, then by all accounts she was a sensible and rational one, who mostly kept to themselves. The few times some of the more headstrong of the town thought to light their torches and draw their pitchforks, usually because of some nearby famine or disease they were sure she has caused, they abruptly felt far more tired than usual, or happened to meet a friend walking in the middle of the night, or found those shoes they were certain they had lost ages ago, and they went back to bed with their families.

Surely the witch would still be there in the morning if their tempers smoldered throughout the night (though, curiously, they never did). But the legends persist regardless, of how she was once a fearsome sorceress who had gone into hiding to escape a foe far more terrible, or the turncoat confidante of whatever evil king happened to be running throughout the thoughts and words of those interested in that sort of thing, or a goddess taken human form to suit their own inscrutable purposes.

And with those come the seekers. The self-proclaimed adventurers and heroes, looking for a new quest and a new foe. The curious scholars, come to learn what they could about the legend of the forest. The nobles, surveying territory. The occasional merchant, scanning for something to sell, preferably expensive. The lost, hoping to find, or to be found. And to all of them, she gives the same response. She greets them in the clearing, her hut a backdrop against the darkened night, the only light emanating from the moon high above. She takes some wood from a pile of logs set aside, seemingly for this very purpose, and builds a small fireplace. She invites the visitor, whomever they may be, to take a seat on the grass, and audibly snaps her fingers. The wood alights, seemingly by magic. She tells them to stay a while, and listen, and then sits down opposite from them, cross-legged, eyes closed. When they think to finally open their eyes, she is gone, and the area looks a good deal more abandoned than it reasonably should. Nobody comments on it, or even seems to observe it, but everyone leaves that place with something deep inside of them changed. Enlightened, perhaps. Or maybe cursed. Who’s to say?

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A setting of pure, bleak white. Your eyes flick open, and are immediately blinded by the flat monotony. The only thing you look at is yourself. There is nothing else to look at, so much so that you cannot focus on anything. After all, what is there to focus on? Slowly picking yourself up and getting to your feet, you start walking. It is hard, of course, to keep going without any indication of time or distance, no way to know how far you have been walking, no way to know when you’ll get somewhere, if you’ll get somewhere. Just focus on each step. To pass the time somewhat, you observe yourself. Your clothes are nondescript and grey, almost able to blend in with the white surrounding you. Your body is, thankfully, normal, as far as you can tell. To pass the time, you focus on the feeling of the clothes on your body, trying to keep those nerves active and give you anything to take your mind off of this. After uncountable minutes, you hear the faintest sound behind your ear. As you turn around, grateful for the stimulation, it continues to sound off behind your ear. Whatever this mysterious noise is, it will not be seen by your eyes. You listen to it, but it is far too soft to make out, but, as you begin walking again, it grows a little louder. Eventually, you are able to perceive it: whispered voices, hushed and quick, speaking. They are inconstant in their words, and their advice frequently conflicts with what some other voice is saying. One, persistent, begs you to wake up, whilst another orders you to go deeper. They get louder. Nothing about them betrays detail of any supposed speaker: the voices are genderless, without accent, or dialect, or unique sound. They get louder. You walk forward, hoping for some escape from this infinite hell, some color to a lifeless world. Steps quickening, heart beating faster, eyes moving rapidly, you break into a sprint. The voices are a dull roar now, so many its hard to pick apart any one from the crowd. They get louder. And louder. And louder. Even after you run out of energy, and slow to a snail’s pace. This much noise is probably enough to drive anyone mad. Probably. The one blessing out of this is that the steady crescendo is anything but boring. Your head is pounding with the thousands of thoughts inhabiting it. You swear they aren’t in your head, but nothing around you seems to confirm that. And still they get louder. Growing, along with the sense that something has gone horribly wrong. Your vision begins to blur, though there is nothing for it to blur on. Your head feels heavy, and when it topples, so does the rest of you. You lay on the ground, unable to think, your mind nearly as blank as your environment, but for the voices. As they seem to reach a climax, you finally hear one, clear as day: “What would you give to be rid of us?” And then it stops. The voices cut off. The silence is far more deafening than they could ever be. You are, once again, alone in your own brain. As you walk onward, trying to find them again, trying to find something, anything, again. Something, perhaps some other sense of yours, feels like something is missing, and as you turn to continue on, you suddenly look down at the white floor and realize what has changed. There is no longer anything but white below your lack of feet. Where is your body? You spin around only to see it still behind you, still collapsed, now immobile. No breaths escape that mouth, no movement in those hands. You can’t move it, no matter how hard you try, your non-existent ‘hands’ passing through it. Even when you submerge your ‘self’ in the corpse, it refuses to obey your commands. All attempts prove fruitless, and you turn to leave, but then, then its eyes flick open, staring directly at you. Though its mouth is still, you hear, in sudden clarity, a voice from behind your ear, like all the others. This time, you recognize it to be your own. “You are here for a reason. You always are.” And then the body, still staring at you, begins to dissolve into the air, vanishing like so much dust. And from it, everything else disappears too.

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The clock marks 2 am, Wednesday morning, and I am silently reading essays. This is not something that I usually do, but my english teacher has finally finished grading my class for the essays we recently wrote, and I am following my tradition of reading everyone else’s essay from the shared folder where they are stored. Since the beginning of the year, every time we received a graded essay, I have taken to reading not only mine, but also those of my classmates, including the comments left on each of these papers, by the teacher, myself, and others. At this point it has become a sort of rite. Not to say I do this religiously, of course (I have actually abstained from doing this once, for an assignment I particularly disliked for multiple reasons).

Because I am not very much a social-minded person, I am not often invited to participate in the small talk that occurs between said peers in class, and when I do try to start such conversation myself, I regrettably find that I do not have the presence needed to command that attention. I am, admittedly, still working on this, but, in the meantime, the essays serve as open a window into their lives as I can get. Through these, I listen to and learn about my classmates, wondering what exists that creates this large a gap between me and that ‘other’.

This particular assignment had us describe “something”. Refreshingly, we were given a lot of freedom over what that “something” was. I happened to write, in my mind, what was a decent essay, but I am more engrossed in the text I am currently reading, written by one of my close friends. On the surface, its simply a description about a household, but I know his writing style well, and the deeper subtleties do not escape me. Or so I hope.

As I read some of the more emotional pieces, I am reminded of a text we read in class. In it, writing becomes ‘invasive’, the writer ‘a secret bully’, with the complete and utter arrogance of imposing their selves, their minds, and their thoughts on the reader. This…strikes me as completely different. For one, I am seeking out to read these myself. Am I being coerced in any way? Naught but by my own mind, which makes this a very pitiful sort of bullying indeed. And what of the arrogance? I do not believe it arrogant to speak one’s own mind. How else will anyone else know what you wish to say? I find communication to be a virtue, which is quite ironic since I seem to engage in so little of it myself. Communication is how humanity as a species has achieved the glorious things that we are so proud of today.

That essay calls writing an aggressive and hostile act, but reading these essays makes me think differently. They are schoolwork, after all, and surely some of my peers believe that what they write for these assignments is between only them, our teacher, and the private few they invite to read said assignment. Me? Perhaps I am an intruder of sorts, reading what is not exactly meant for my eyes, knowing, now, what it is not necessary for me to know. Writing allows a writer to be vulnerable, to drop whatever facade their daily life encourages them to mask themselves in, and my reading this seems contrary to what that essay makes of it: In reading these, I now have become the bully, taking advantage of assumed privacy to glean what I can about my classmates, analyze them to the core as objects more than people, and for what? To make up for my own weaknesses? What grants me this arrogance? Nevertheless, these are idle thoughts floating around an empty head, ready for another essay, for more words, thoughts, and ideas. And so I shuffle through to the next essay. 

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The stars are twinkling up above, my sleeping form is lying below, and I am caught in between, looking at both and at neither. The stars form different shapes, and I see lines in between, connecting them, shifting and pulsating. Now there is a bull, now a man, now a rabbit. I gaze deeper, and they become more abstract. A circle turns into a square turns into a tetrahedron, culminating in a particularly impressive fractal, by my reckoning. And as I watch, they change color, shape, and clarity, until I am no longer looking at stars but into my own imagination, my dreamscape. It is everything I wish it to be, and nothing like how I’d thought of it. It appears as bright swirls of color draped across structural bones of duller things, the ethereal fabric of an otherworld, a lock to which the key is my mind, my body, and my soul. All my thoughts, splayed across the sky. Above me are my aspirations, below me my fantasies. I see wild speculation playing out in front of me, deer frolicking in a field of dreams. Idle conversation flies above, squawking nonsensical cries. The far-off city houses my mannerisms, and my endearments, for when I understand how to properly wield them. The people living there are different aspects and forms of me, waiting for me to join them. I find myself glowing. My laughter flows out of my mouth to become script written in the air. Even my sillier thoughts are given life, it seems, as a small chimera animatedly runs behind the female muse walking in a field. The ocean in the distance is where my subconscious lies, and I can barely see it, foggy as it is. The environment is inconsistent and unstable, ever-changing and as vast as a universe, but I know the map like the back of my hand (which, speaking of, happens to be three doors down to the right). Everything contorts, and somehow, it reaches out to me, inviting me to join it. I accept. Just as I need it, it also needs me, and so I take it into my hands and mold it around me. Here, I am in bliss. Embraced by my own colored feelings, circling around me, becoming my garments. Here, I fly, powered by my own song. Who gives a damn about the tunes others may live by? I’ll not let it affect this world inside me against my will. The sky is my canvas, clear and dark, the stars are my paints, shining brightly whatever color I wish them to be. Here, time is unreal, and space is nonexistent. I hear music in the background, instruments roaring ascendance. I smell the scent of rose in the air, and look around, surveying that which I am. Here, I am free. And as I come to that culminating thought, the sun rises in the West, to proclaim the dawn of a new day.

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I feel as though, having written this, I am giving away a part of myself to those who read it. Something personal, and yet completely incomprehensible. As you may have guessed, almost no part of this story occurred in real life, at least, not in the way I have told it. But this is what goes on in my head at night, when I am neither asleep nor awake, and I believe it is as close as I can get to directly opening my mind and transmitting myself across paper to you. I realize perfectly well that I cannot completely encompass my entire self in the span of a couple thousand words, but I hope this is a sufficient excerpt. In short, this is my fever dream, when my mind is unbounded of even the smallest chains. This is a taste of the symphony of stimuli that explodes in my head. It is not a narrative, at least, not in the traditional sense, but I have chosen to eschew that in favor of making it far more personal.

Thank you for reading this.