hilik.

Those who have compared our life to a dream were right. We sleeping wake, and waking sleep.
- Michel de Montaigne, Essays, 1580


It was two o'clock. She knew it was time. She wove her way through the nine cats guarding the abandoned place. They stood in her path, but not a single body attacked her as she stepped over each one. Finally, she reached the land's edge. It was her ocean. She gathered her hair to a ponytail. She held on to all the strands and knelt. She looked to the left. Nobody was in sight. She bowed down, and used the tips of her hair to etch a faint cross on the sand. The sand surrounding her slowly turned white. She bowed low again, and tasted the land. It was now aspartame. She looked to the left. Nobody was in sight. She then felt her right cheek with her fingers. The fingers moved up to her temple. Then, they moved down. She plucked the hair strand she thought was closest to her right ear. As she did this, a warm female breeze enveloped her. It pushed the strand she was grasping onto the ocean. She counted. "One." "Two." "Three." "Four." The ocean was no more. In its place was more white sand. More sugar. This did not frighten her. The cats purred and walked to where she stood. She dropped her grandmother's watch and buried it into the white world. The cats dug it up. They saw the time. The second hand never moved. It was two o'clock.

Dreams are illustrations... from the book your soul is writing about you.
- Marsha Norman


It was one o'clock. Since her last dream, she had learned. Never trust the time in that place. So, she wore one of her father's gifts, a Glashütte, to bed. She still had an hour to spare. She slid an earpiece into her right ear. A song from a musical flowed in. She stared into space.

"It is two o'clock," said the German watch. "And the girl is asleep."

She wove her way through the nine cats guarding the abandoned place. They stood in her path, but not a single body attacked her as she stepped over each one. Finally, she reached what she believed was the land's edge. Beside her was a cat. It had silently followed her, and was now staring out into the white sea with approving eyes. The creature itself was white, except for an outstanding red line running from between its eyes to its tail. "You knew that last night was a failure." The feline nodded. It seemed to be agreeing with the view, not with her.

She gathered her hair to a ponytail. She held on to all the strands and knelt. She looked to the left. Nobody was in sight. She bowed down, and used the tips of her hair to etch a faint cross on the artificial land. The sugar surrounding her slowly turned gray. She bowed low again, and tasted, and yes, it was now sand. She was about to touch her face, but the ocean was already back. The cats purred, but one of them was gone.

It was all that she could do that night. Or that day. She lay on her side, looking out, but looking at nothing. Her eyes never moved up to see that her constellation was observing her.

"She would learn some more. Tomorrow would be different."

The girl woke up. The song had not ended yet.

A dream which is not interpreted is like a letter which is not read.
- The Talmud


The dream came to her half a score ago. Since then, reality had been gently succumbing. Each morrow the dream unveiled itself a little more clearly; a little more inviting of cognition. And each morrow when the dream was over, she would stare up from her bed, stare at nothing, and mutely whisper to herself, "Wake up." Yet what did it mean, waking up?

Ten years of being in the dream was not what taught her how to properly face it. It was the little random things she discovered while in it, the somehow irrelevant trinkets of thought that she chose to preserve --- those were what made her grow in that world. She was surviving through them, and she would call them her jujus. She would still fail. Yet failure was good. And she knew she was beginning to understand the place, and her place in the place.

The cats were good sources of jujus, if only because cats in the real world dreamt while awake, and it was as watching herself when she would watch them. They would watch her, too, though. And she felt they were cheating, stealing some of her jujus while she strained to grasp some wisdom from them.

The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle.
- Anaïs Nin


"Go where, Sofrito?"

The cat led the way. It was far from two o'clock and yet she was able to control this dream. She stopped in her tracks and whispered, "Hah. Sofi, you have always read my mind. And now you're using that power to direct my dream for me."

Sofrito nodded.

They were going north. As north as possible. In fact, they were headed to the north pole.

The girl snorted, "Sofi, you do know I know where we're going, si?"

Sofrito blinked, then turned to the smiling girl. Its purple eyes were of innocence. Then, of understanding. Then, of course, of defeat. It looked away, looked down, and ceremoniously licked its left paw. After the cleansing it turned back to the girl and sank its claws into her waiting toes.

"You deceived me."

"Yes. I can now choose what it is for you to read. And I can now read all of you."

She kept her smile. She was learning, after all.

"Two o'clocks shouldn't matter anymore. Just read me and I'll read you."

Sofrito nodded.

What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you dreamed?
And what if, in your dream, you went to heaven
and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower?
And what if, when you awoke, you had the flower in your hand?
Ah, what then?
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge


She was half awake, yet her lids never opened. Her digits crawled to the pen under her pillow. She scribbled on her palm in shorthand:

past = future = present
tree
branches, twigs
feet on water

And her arm retreated to join her in her slumber.

Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
- Edgar Allan Poe


It had been kept from her, but she was a cheat, and she cheated.

The dream, it turned out, was separated into two islands. They seemed to have not been named yet, and she was the first to call them the north pole, and the south pole. Where she had left her cross was the south pole; where they were headed, the north.

"Sofi, the Grand Cross formed an opposition of the woman and the ring."

Sofi gave out a sigh, a purr. They reached the eclipse. A short moment of brightness came to pass, and she saw that the cat's eyes were shut. They went on in silence and darkness. They made it to the shore.

"You shall discover Mazin here. The Cross desires me."

As the old creature departed, the girl dropped to the sweet sand.

"Mazin?"

The whole knows it already.
The whole knows more about you than you know.
- Osho


"Surely you know you are bound to her now."
"Si."

The cats gathered around the Grand Cross. Sofrito was, until then, the cat tasked to maintain the ring. Such coveted task that day/night was handed to Corsair, the white cat.

Haphazard changes were made to the ring -- changes Sofrito was not to be informed of anymore.

The purple cat bit Corsair's neck, and whiteness spilled. Corsair, in turn, bit Sofrito, and purple blood oozed down to its paws.

"Un."
"Two."
"Three."
"Four."

The north pole turned to an island of purple blood; the south pole, to sugar.

"The woman shall remain in opposition."

All the cats nodded. They seemed to be agreeing with the view, not with her.

He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.
- Albert Einstein


Someone was ruling the dream, and it wasn't her.
But that was her dream.
And she believed she must rule it.

Life, like a dome of many-colored glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity.
- Shelley


Mazin, she surmised, was the circle. From afar, it appeared as a circle of four beings holding hands. With every step she took closer to it, she saw a new face in each of them. And when she was close enough, a couple or so strides from the nearest body, she had seen eighty or more personas.

We can never neatly separate what we see from what we know.
What we call seeing is invariably colored and shaped by our knowledge (or belief) of what we see.
- John Wheeler


Corsair was beside her.

"That isn't what you are here for."

"But, Mazin, isn't it this?"

"Mazin, maze, it was supposed to be easy."

Corsair raised one paw to point to the other side of the beach. The girl turned, and there it was. Mazin's entrance.

For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.
- (Isaiah 55:8-9)


The girl looked back. The circle was still there. It was captivating, and she was ready to question the cat why it existed, and why they let her discover it, if it was of no purpose to the dream.

Corsair looked back. The creature appeared as enthralled as she was.

How many miles to Babylon?
Threescore miles and ten.
Can I get there by candle-light?
Yes, and back again.
- Mother Goose


"What is it?"

"All that it is is you, my dear, but it is not all that is you."

To the elements it came from
Everything will return.
Our bodies to earth,
Our blood to water,
Heat to fire,
Breath to air.
- Matthew Arnold, Empedocles on Etna


The dream was limitless. But as of what she was to understand of it, she had no way of telling how much she would will herself to, or how much the dream would allow her to. What frustrated her the most was when she believed she was close to the dream's essence, and when euphoria would climb up to her being, something new would come up, something she knew would slowly destroy every amount of trust her thoughts had earned from her.

It was in accepting that she would not be able to comprehend the whole -- and by trying to see the dream as something separate from what she was -- that she learned there was no need to see it all yet, no need to see it in its entirety.

She started seeing things as points.

Master a point. Know all that it is.

Choose another point. Master it. Embrace everything that is is.

And, somehow, you end up creating a line. And, in time, every bit of such line, every point between your two points, embraces you.

She chose one point. The four figures. She found something to focus on, and she would not move on to some random point again until this had been conquered.

"Other dreamers would see their dream differently, but they all must share a few random thoughts," she thought. "The four figures could be a common point."

There's not the smallest orb, which thou beholdest,
But in his motion like an angel sings.
Such harmony is in immortal souls
But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
- Shakespeare


It had been a number of nights. With each waking moment of remembrance, she knew she had excursed to the same chapter of the dream again. It kept coming back to her, leaving her with the insisting thought: You missed it.

Memories awoke with each replay: an unheard whisper, a faint scent, choice words otherwise forgotten, movements, seconds that were let to pass without being understood.

Were her senses sharpening with each visit to such moment? Would she miss it still tomorrow?

You see,
when weaving a blanket,
an Indian woman leaves a flaw in the weaving of that blanket to let the soul out.
-Martha Graham


So they hide. To reveal themselves for a moment or three. But never to stay.

To return to the nothingness where they were meant to exist.

And as for you, have you seen them and feigned disbelief, or have they eluded your sight and still you pretend to believe?

Observation without evaluation is the highest form of intelligence.
- Jiddhu Krishnamurti


And although the scene was oft-played and repeated and would never cease its existence, she accepted she would not master it, for the reason that she was not to master it.

Because, as with every bit of this dream, she was to keep discovering and learning, but not know, never know for sure.