There is that precious moment between wakefulness and sleep. It’s like walking through a gate, and your feet are on either side of the threshold. One foot coming, the other going. We don’t pay much attention when we walk through doors and gates. But this moment between being awake and falling asleep is magical. For that very brief moment, you are both — awake and asleep. You could go forward or you could go back. And it doesn’t matter – you may experience these moments more than once in that one night. And anything can happen in this moment.
This moment is a seed: of a dream, if you fall asleep; of a story, if you stay awake.
And one such night, I went back and ended up being awake. It’s usually a vision, that seed, that moment. Lying awake in bed, staring at the ceiling, I regretted not being able to dream where that vison would have taken me. So I teased that vision. “Why, vision, why did you appear magically, out of nowhere?” The vision didn’t have anything to say. I teased it further – “Maybe you are this, maybe you are that…” And with each tease, I was awake, moving further away from that gateway to sleep. I was answering on behalf of the vision and it didn’t seem to mind. It seemed to happily hear my questions and agree with my answers. The vision was turning to a story. The seed was natural, the growth wasn’t.
A dream is easier. It doesn’t have to rely on imagination. It doesn’t have the constraints of reality or logic. A story on the other hand is constructed within these constraints. A story is remembered and can then be written. A dream fades away; a few fascinating fragments remain.
There must be a place just like that precious moment between wakefulness and sleep, where stories and dreams can become one.
Gaizabonts 