Metaphysica Morum
My instructions were to follow a sequence of absurdly simple acts and to keep the operation secret. First, I was to make my way into the assigned environment; second, I would depart in the most natural manner, undetected if possible, though that part was not essential. Such was the basic framework of the dream. Nevertheless, my sense was that the orders I was carrying out would have repercussions in a far greater scheme. While feelings of this kind often inhere in night visions, their quality on this occasion seemed of a nature surpassing anything I had previously experienced in the world of sleep.
The role I was to play was that of a common individual on a “shopping mission,” words that suggested to me the most sinister fusion of the banal and the remarkable. I was already in character when someone approached me—the Dealer (as I thought of him)—to accommodate my pretended purpose. His place of business, that “chain of galaxies” showroom, impressed me as having been synthesized in a rented bathtub, as my mind conceived it. At the same time, this was not an unfamiliar environment to me. Once again, I quivered at a representation of the outlandish and the everyday. It was in some way an analogue of the world I desperately wanted to exit by suicide in my waking life, ideally by the administration of an anesthetic—the most benign form of euthanasia. In a momentary flash of lucidity, I even came to the realization that such a procedure was then unsanctioned in both the material realm as well as the most distant frontiers to which I had been directed in dreams.
The Dealer was a lanky specimen who was nearly twice my height. He seemed about to break at the waist as he bent toward me. For what seemed the tenth time, he said, “If I understand you correctly, sir, you are in the market for an all-new context. ”
“I shouldn’t be able to see so far,” I said. I meant the dimensions of the dream. There seemed no limit to what my sight beheld. Grotesque patterns were in movement seemingly light-years from where I stood.
“You are a metaphysical mutant, if I’m not mistaken. Not even a generation from the swamplands, fertile soil for aberrations of all types.” I now felt a connection to some awful genesis, something transmitting forces of harm to the nucleus of my being. “And you’ve been seeking my services for some time.”
Much more was said, words spoken to me in an unknown language, yet one I understood as relating to schemes of immense repercussions. And there were other things that were not said but still related all the same, as if my mind were communing with itself. There were instructions of intent, infinitely complex processes and principles at work, manifestations that were singular and manifold at once, particular and universal, arbitrary and absolute, all of which were correlated in ways both infinitesimal and immeasurable within my nature. As is common in dreams of affairs beyond sensible conception, which I had experienced all my life and over the years refined into the formulations here articulated, I was overwhelmed by an uncanny dread and thereby phased out of sleep.
***
Now, by this time of my life, I usually awoke from such a dream in a state of agitated annoyance, both with the deranged experience I had just undergone and with my ranking as a defective human being, which is to say a human being as such. As a dreaming organism I had long ago abandoned obsessing over scenarios and details of a symbolic standing, tediously auditing that which I allowed to be sucked down the drain of all psychological point or meaning within seconds of my regaining consciousness of the waking world. And as I have noted, this world itself seemed to me no better than a landscape synthesized in a rented bathtub, oneirically speaking. But on this dream occasion, as I will refer to these excursions henceforth, the words “all-new context” stayed with me and did not disappear
My instructions were to follow a sequence of absurdly simple acts and to keep the operation secret. First, I was to make my way into the assigned environment; second, I would depart in the most natural manner, undetected if possible, though that part was not essential. Such was the basic framework of the dream. Nevertheless, my sense was that the orders I was carrying out would have repercussions in a far greater scheme. While feelings of this kind often inhere in night visions, their quality on this occasion seemed of a nature surpassing anything I had previously experienced in the world of sleep.
The role I was to play was that of a common individual on a “shopping mission,” words that suggested to me the most sinister fusion of the banal and the remarkable. I was already in character when someone approached me—the Dealer (as I thought of him)—to accommodate my pretended purpose. His place of business, that “chain of galaxies” showroom, impressed me as having been synthesized in a rented bathtub, as my mind conceived it. At the same time, this was not an unfamiliar environment to me. Once again, I quivered at a representation of the outlandish and the everyday. It was in some way an analogue of the world I desperately wanted to exit by suicide in my waking life, ideally by the administration of an anesthetic—the most benign form of euthanasia. In a momentary flash of lucidity, I even came to the realization that such a procedure was then unsanctioned in both the material realm as well as the most distant frontiers to which I had been directed in dreams.
The Dealer was a lanky specimen who was nearly twice my height. He seemed about to break at the waist as he bent toward me. For what seemed the tenth time, he said, “If I understand you correctly, sir, you are in the market for an all-new context. ”
“I shouldn’t be able to see so far,” I said. I meant the dimensions of the dream. There seemed no limit to what my sight beheld. Grotesque patterns were in movement seemingly light-years from where I stood.
“You are a metaphysical mutant, if I’m not mistaken. Not even a generation from the swamplands, fertile soil for aberrations of all types.” I now felt a connection to some awful genesis, something transmitting forces of harm to the nucleus of my being. “And you’ve been seeking my services for some time.”
Much more was said, words spoken to me in an unknown language, yet one I understood as relating to schemes of immense repercussions. And there were other things that were not said but still related all the same, as if my mind were communing with itself. There were instructions of intent, infinitely complex processes and principles at work, manifestations that were singular and manifold at once, particular and universal, arbitrary and absolute, all of which were correlated in ways both infinitesimal and immeasurable within my nature. As is common in dreams of affairs beyond sensible conception, which I had experienced all my life and over the years refined into the formulations here articulated, I was overwhelmed by an uncanny dread and thereby phased out of sleep.
***
Now, by this time of my life, I usually awoke from such a dream in a state of agitated annoyance, both with the deranged experience I had just undergone and with my ranking as a defective human being, which is to say a human being as such. As a dreaming organism I had long ago abandoned obsessing over scenarios and details of a symbolic standing, tediously auditing that which I allowed to be sucked down the drain of all psychological point or meaning within seconds of my regaining consciousness of the waking world. And as I have noted, this world itself seemed to me no better than a landscape synthesized in a rented bathtub, oneirically speaking. But on this dream occasion, as I will refer to these excursions henceforth, the words “all-new context” stayed with me and did not disappear
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