Wednesday: Writing

Have you ever had a dream wherein you have to use your cell phone only to find it totally dysfunctional and incomprehensible? They say that is an entrance into lucid dreaming and from there you can actually control your dimly aware subconscious. That's when they say you should try flying.

One morning I was on the bus on a rather languishing commute to work when, pulling out my cell phone to send a naughty text to my boyfriend, the machine suddenly ceased to make sense. I cycled through the letters, but they failed to form meaning. I looked up all around myself to reassure myself that I was awake and not dreaming. Everything seemed real enough, but when I looked back to the cell phone, it remained utterly useless and eerily dreamlike. I tried the keys again, but the shapes that appeared on the screen were not letters though they recalled a sense of language. They dangled at the edge of comprehension, yet my eyes could not see words nor could my mind properly fix them into place. A ring of panic formed in my forehead, rising in volume, like a TV cutting into static. I looked out the window, grasping at desperate answers while everyone else sat in bored calm around me.

"Maybe I had too much coffee. Maybe my allergy medicine is reacting badly with something. Maybe I didn't cook my eggs all the way through."

I recalled another theory in which death is manifested in some suspension between reality and dreams.

I looked at the cell phone again. The squared shapes now moved of their own accord, flipping through an alien language spoken with a human tongue. The static burned a hole in my forehead and my vision began to vibrate. I watched the phone - I couldn't even tell what time it was. I was sweating.

And then suddenly, a new message appeared, and I could read it - my boyfriend had beat me to the dirty text.

My vision sharpened, my hearing cleared, and all the world sank back into its humming monotony as if nothing had ever happened.

"I think I just had too much coffee this morning."

Or maybe I had entered the dream world through a portal forgotten in reality.

Next time I'll have to see if I can fly.

Writing January 20th 2010