No. It was a suggestion. Un bosquejo. Un borrador, quiz++s. Yes.
In any case it is difficult to stand outside of one's desires and see things of their own volition.
I think you just see whatever's in front of you.
Yes. I dont think that.
What was the dream?
The dream, the man said.
You dont have to tell me.
How do you know?
You dont have to tell me anything.
Perhaps. Nevertheless there was this man who was traveling through the mountains and he came to a place in the mountains where certain pilgrims used to gather in the long ago.
Is this the dream?
Yes.
cndale pues.
Gracias. Where pilgrims used to gather in the long ago. En tiempos antiguos.
You've told this dream before.
Yes.
cndale.
En tiempos antiguos. It was a high pass in the mountains that he had come to and here there was a table of rock and the table of rock was very old and it had fallen in the early days of the earth from a high pe-asco in the mountains and lay in the floor of the pass with its flat and cloven side to the weather and the sun. And on the face of that rock there were yet to be seen the stains of blood from those who'd been slaughtered upon it to appease the gods. The iron in the blood of these vanished beings had blackened the rock and there it could be seen. Together with the hatching of axemarks or the marks of swords upon the stone to show where the work was done.
Is there such a place?
I dont know. Yes. There are such places. But this was not one of them. This was a dream place.
cndale.
So the traveler arrived at this place at nightfall when the mountains about were darkening and the wind in the pass was growing cold with night's onset and he put down his burden to rest himself and he removed his hat to cool his brow and then his eyes fell upon this bloodstained altarstone which the weathers of the sierra and the sierra's storms had these millennia been impotent to cleanse. And there he elected to pass the night, such is the recklessness of those whom God has been so good as to shield from their just share of adversity in this world.
Who was the traveler?
I dont know.
Was it you?
I dont think so. But then if we do not know ourselves in the waking world what chance in dreams?
I'd think I'd know if it was me.
Yes. But have you not met people in dreams you never saw before? In dreams or out?
Sure.
And who were they?
I dont know. Dream people.
You think you made them up. In your dream.
I guess. Yeah.
Could you do it waking?
Billy sat with his arms over his knees. No, he said. I guess I couldnt.
No. Anyway I think the self of you in dreams or out is only that which you elect to see. I'm guessing every man is more than he supposes.
cndale.
So. This traveler was such a man. He laid down his burden and surveyed the darkening scene. In that high pass was naught but rock and scree and as he thought to at least raise himself above the feasible paths of serpents in the night so he came to the altar and placed his hands upon it. He paused, but he did not pause long enough. He unrolled his blanket upon the stone and weighted down the ends with rocks that it not be blown away by the wind before he could remove his boots.
Did he know what kind of stone it was?
No.
Then who knew?
The dreamer knew.
You.
Yes.
Well I reckon you and him had to of been two different people then.
How so?
Because if you were the same then one would know what the other knew.
As in the world.
Yes.
But this is not the world. This is a dream. In the world the question could not occur.
cndale.
Remove his boots. When he had removed them he climbed onto the stone and rolled himself in his blanket and upon that cold and terrible pallet he composed himself for sleep.
I wish him luck.
Yes. Yet sleep he did.
He fell asleep in your dream.
Yes.
How do you know he was asleep?
I could see him sleeping.
Did he dream?
The man sat looking at his shoes. He uncrossed his legs and recrossed them the other way. Well, he said. I'm not sure how to answer you. Certain events occurred. Some things about them remain unclear. It is difficult to know, for instance, when it was that these events took place.
Why?
The dream I had was on a certain night. And in the dream the traveler appeared. What night was this? In the life of the traveler when was it that he came to spend the night in that rocky posada? He slept and events took place which I will tell you of, but when was this? You can see the problem. Let us say that the events which took place were a dream of this man whose own reality remains conjectural. How assess the world of that conjectural mind? And what with him is sleep and what is waking? How comes he to own a world of night at all? Things need a ground to stand upon. As every soul requires a body. A dream within a dream makes other claims than what a man might suppose.
A dream inside a dream might not be a dream.
You have to consider the possibility.
It just sounds like superstition to me.
And what is that?
Superstition?
Yes.
Well. I guess it's when you believe in things that dont exist.
Such as tomorrow? Or yesterday?
Such as the dreams of somebody you dreamt. Yesterday was here and tomorrow's comin.
Maybe. But anyway the dreams of this man were his own dreams. They were distinct from my dream. In my dream the man was lying on his stone asleep.
You still could of made them up.
En este mundo todo es posible. Vamos a ver.
It's like the picture of your life in that map.
C-mo?
Es un dibujo nada m++s. It aint your life. A picture aint a thing. It's just a picture.
Well said. But what is your life? Can you see it? It vanishes at its own appearance. Moment by moment. Until it vanishes to appear no more. When you look at the world is there a point in time when the seen becomes the remembered? How are they separate? It is that which we have no way to show. It is that which is missing from our map and from the picture that it makes. And yet it is all we have.
You aint said whether your map was any use to you or not.
The man tapped his lower lip with his forefinger. He looked at Billy. Yes, he said. We will come to that. For now I can only say that I had hoped for a sort of calculus that would sum the convergence of map and life when life was done. For within their limitations there must be a common shape or shared domain between the telling and the told. And if that is so then the picture also in whatever partial form must have a direction to it and if it does then whatever is to come must lie in that path. You say that the life of a man cannot be pictured. But perhaps we mean different things. The picture seeks to seize and immobilize within its own configurations what it never owned. Our map knows nothing of time. It has no power to speak even of the hours implicit in its own existence. Not of those that have passed, not of those to come. Yet in its final shape the map and the life it traces must converge for there time ends.
So if I'm right still it's for the wrong reasons.
Perhaps we should return to the dreamer and his dream.
cndale.
You might wish to say that the traveler woke and that the events which took place were not a dream at all. But I think to view them as a dream is the wiser course. For if these events were else than a dream he would not wake at all. As you will see.
cndale.
My own dream is another matter. My traveler sleeps a troubled dream. Shall I wake him? The proprietary claims of the dreamer upon the dreamt have their limits. I cannot rob the traveler of his own autonomy lest he vanish altogether. You see the problem.