Sincerest Form of the Deus Ex Machina

“What was it?” I asked. One of the vessels had broken open and the colors were swirling out in little eddies around our feet.

“Dreams,” you said, “They were formed by irradiation illusion. It’s the interchange and scattering between light and our eyes. It is a little of what is heard, seen, sensed and touched throughout history, time and space. It is all interpersonal relationships come in from sea. We tried to take all thought material and broadened it into a being of beauty and benefit to create The Dream. We planned on all these interesting mutations to form One Dream that was real, touchable, tangible – but some things refuse to be limited in existence.”

I tried to imagine what it would be like if my world was populated by Dreams – refracting, crystallizing and expanding into infinity – but I couldn’t. I asked you what was going to happen to all the broken Dreams. “We don’t have to do anything. They will eventually just evaporate and return to nothingness,” you said.

I admired you and what it was that made you choose to do this in the first place. I wanted to know if you felt as all of your dreams were slowly dissolving. I wondered how it felt to create ten thousand new dreams and then have to abandon them. Through the silence of your eyes you said, “Well, sometimes they’re better if they occur by themselves. Dreams are because emotions can be overwhelming.”

The sun could be seen dawning through the Orchid Jungle, so you had to go but promised you’d meet me back here. I lingered there alone for a few more moments, just to prolong the beginning. As I turned to go, I glanced back for an eternity.

(Imitation of Orlean, Susan The Orchid Thief. New York: Random House, 1998. 151-152)