Sleep is a gateway,
A trapdoor to the underworld of the mind,
Held captive by the consciousness that runs our brain like a machine.
The machine whirs,
Pistons fire and pulleys shift and gears crank and steam hisses
And the machine begins to slow.
But when the gears stop turning,
When the machine is dormant,
Is when the real work begins.
Dreams were often interpreted by ancient civilizations:
Native Americans, Ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Indians, Chinese,
All recognized the power of dreaming
The building blocks to their great pyramids of self-understanding.
The infinite waves of possibility and probability clashing together on the vast beach, each grain of sand a moment lived and a moment not lived.
And as the mind gets lost in the possibilities,
Surfing the crashing waves and diving deep beneath the inky black water of inexistent time and space, some of the waves crash onto the beach and wash over the mind’s eye.
Memories flow and ebb, and in this space behind your eyes, a library of experience
Is inspected, cataloged, and selected by the machine that is working even when it is not supposed to be working.
Memories are delicate: a reflection seen through a shard of ice, held in the cold depths of the mind’s library. Sometimes these memories are more difficult to grasp:
The cold is not quite so strong in some minds.
In some minds, the ice melts, and the mind’s eye peers through the rippling reflection of a puddle, and bits of memory are lost as they drip into the cracks of the stone walkway between each shelf of memory.
For some, recalling a memory simply means peering into the pool of murky water sheltered behind their eyes and staring at the empty reflection looking back at them.
For most, dreams are the only place they can touch their true self, the true form of what they are meant to be.
But for some, it means they must stare into the pool and realize
That their pyramid has crumbled before they have even had the chance to build it,
And the only indication of the once-great structure, the sandstone blocks made up of the grains of sand of moments lived and not lived,
The solid ray of light shining down on the desert,
Is the dust that clouds the reflecting pool of memory.