The Blurry Passage from Dreaming to Being

[Image: an early example of one of my so-called “#jesstorypix” photo series on Instagram — photos, usually enigmatic/ambiguous in some way, with little, uh, microfictional captions. The caption on this one (from August, 2018) reads: “Ironically, the jukebox in the diner was playing Jim Reeves’s ‘He’ll Have to Go’ at the time they had their last conversation. It didn’t work out as he’d planned.” (If you’re not familiar with the song, here’s a simple lyrics-only video.)]

From whiskey river:

Once while visiting his friend Max Brod, young Kafka awakened Brod’s father, who was asleep on a couch. Instead of apologizing, Kafka gently motioned him to relax, advanced through the room on tiptoe, and said softly: “Please — consider me a dream.”

(Franz Baumer [source, in original German])

…and (first stanza):

Scotch Tape Body

I never thought,
forty years ago,
taping my poems into a notebook,
that one day the tape
would turn yellow, grow brittle, and fall off
and that I’d find myself on hands and knees
groaning as I picked the pieces up
off the floor
one by one

Of course no one thinks ahead like that
If I had
I would have used archival paste
or better yet
not have written those poems at all

But then I wouldn’t have had
the pleasure of reading them again,
the pleasure of wincing
and then forgiving myself,
of catching glimpses of who I was
and who I thought I was,
the pleasure—is that the word?—of seeing
that that kid really did exist.

(Ron Padgett [source])

…and:

Take a moment from time to time to remember that you are alive. I know this sounds a trifle obvious, but it is amazing how little time we take to remark upon this singular and gratifying fact. By the most astounding stroke of luck an infinitesimal portion of all the matter in the universe came together to create you and for the tiniest moment in the great span of eternity you have the incomparable privilege to exist.

(Bill Bryson [source])

Not from whiskey river:

“What if we had a chance to do it again and again,” Teddy said, “until we finally did get it right? Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

(Kate Atkinson [source])

…and:

This is my home. This is where I was born. This is the bayou that runs in my dreams, this is the bayou bank that taught me to love water, where I spent endless summer hours alone or with my cousins. This is where I learned to swim, where mud first oozed up between my toes. This is where I saw embryos inside the abdomens of minnows. This is where I believed that if I was vain and looked too long into the water I would turn into a flower.

This is where I learned the legend of the greedy dog. There was an old dog on a raft and he had a bone in his teeth and he looked down into the water and saw a dog carrying a bone and he dropped the one he was holding to snatch the other dog’s bone away and so lost both bones, the real and the imaginary…

This is my world, where I was formed, where I came from, who I am. This is where my sandpile was. I have spent a thousand hours alone beneath this tree making forts for the fairies to dance on in the moonlight. At night, after I was asleep, my mother would come out here and dance her fingers all over my sand forts so that in the morning I would see the prints and believe that fairies danced at night in the sand.

(Ellen Gilchrist [source])

…and:

“Imagine,” Emrys continued, “imagine into your thirsty hand I am putting a heavy bottle. Drink, I say to you, and so you do.

“You lift the heavy bottle to your mouth and you open your lips and into your mouth pours — just a little, for I have so warned you — into your mouth pours a brew like none you have ever tasted. There are the hops and the barley, the malt, sure there are for this is ale after all. You can feel too the creamy foam on your lips. The brew is heavy yet curiously light upon the palate. Stout, you think, but no it is not stout despite the mouthfeel, nor bitters nor barley wine. For you can taste, ‘neath it all, a sweet tang as of honey and roasted hazelnuts. You can taste the clean smooth sparkling water of mountain brooks. You can taste the first shoots of spring and the green of summer and the dusk of early autumn nights, Is that perhaps apple? now you’re asking yourself, and you can feel yourself warmed by the glow of a winter’s fireside, your companions and your wife and yer little ones…”

[…]

Tavern patrons were frozen, immobilized, their mouths open, tankards in mid-air. The barmaids’ eyes swam and they stood riveted in place as though frozen in time, nailed to the floor. The barman himself had gone all glassy-eyed and ruddy, his mouth open as well. They looked like finely crafted wax statues, and they looked at him, Emrys ap Rhys, and Emrys had a mad moment during which he thought he must be dreaming a dream in which there was no time and yet too much of it.

(JES, Seems to Fit)