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Am I awake? Am I dreaming? Am I somehow being deceived about both? What is memory? Is my perception hinging on things that actually exist and the so-called “external” world? Well I must be thinking, I couldn’t be writing this if I do not do so. But, again, I could be being deceived. These are the questions that keep parading through my supposed consciousness like some mad funeral procession that does not end. I have yet to come to any true conclusions, but conclusiveness is not why I am writing. I am writing to somehow flush out the meaning of the queer things I’ve observed, or that I think I have observed, from the vantage point of my studio window. These occurrences I will tell of are all related and are centralized around those things which I believe I have perceived on the Parisian streets.
I awoke one morning and went about my morning rituals: washing my body in the basin, preparing my morning coffee, and busying myself with rearranging my notes on the desk. I then reviewed my innumerate scrawlings from the days previous as I paced the length of the study, reestablishing in my mind where I had left off. On this day I resolved to begin my dissection of why I believe to perceive things to be a certain way in my mind and how this establishes a frame of reference which may or may not be true or truly existing. I exited the study area with the papers in hand and sipping the coffee with the other, I began to circle the perimeter of the studio area in this manner, mildly aware of my movements. I was meditating on an example with which to analogize what I wanted to explore. As I passed the windows I happened to glance at the scenery beyond the panes, catching the image of bundled forms bustling about on the streets. I stopped in mid-step and peered closer out of the window, noticing that I could not easily discern what exactly the forms were. In my mind I knew the forms to be human beings; men and women going about their business, entering and exiting the shops and homesteads dotting the street.
I left the window for a moment to return to the study and brought out a chair to the window. I sat there writing against the back of a large book on my lap recording what I saw out of the window and related it to the frames of reference and the functioning of the mind in such situations. After some time I reclined in my chair satisfied with my progress of the Meditation for the day, though no conclusion had been reached, and reflected on some of the trivialities which plague all of us at one time or another. I realized I had been in that spot for quite some time and I thought of being hungry and weary from lack of caffine. My mind wandered further as I dwelled on those things and I decided finally to retire for the day to my bed in order to rest. I prepared for sleep, rinsing my mouth with water and changing into my bedclothes. I slipped under the sheets and blankets on my bed and let sleep take me.

This is not all that I had done that day, though. And I still do not quite understand what happened that day. Upon waking, I cursed the day as a grey slant of light pressed unmercifully on my eyes through the heavy, closed crimson curtains. I felt a pounding on the inside of my head and I rolled to my opposite side to avoid the damning light but to no avail and I felt a knot developing in my stomach. The knot quickly tightened into nausea and I threw off the heavy blankets, exposing my body to the chill of the room and intensifying the nausea. I fell to my knees over the chamber pot beside the washbasin in the next room and let my stomach dispel bile and undigested pieces of galettes from the previous night. Rising slowly to my feet I felt out of my body and not in full control of it. I set to heating water at the stove then returning to the basin to wash my body and in an attempt to cleanse the feeling of sickness from my mind. I was reluctant to leave the dirtied water, continually shifting my position in the basin so to keep as much of my body submerged as possible. I eventually raised my body out of the water and quickly reached for the robe to the left of the door to escape the numb of the room. After drying my arms and legs and hair and face, I noticed the knot had returned but only tightened enough to make me realize the hunger in my stomach as it was empty.
As I walked the floor of the kitchen, opening cupboard after empty cupboard, I found my mind meandering to thoughts of my editor and publisher. Each bare shelf I found seemed to stab at my pride and my stomach, I lamented the comments that dotted the pages of my Meditations and I despaired at never finishing it and starving to death because of it. I felt a tide of dizziness wash over me, my legs becoming weak and my vision blurring, making the open cabinet I had been staring at begin to appear to be swirling. I shook my head in hopes to relive the feeling and continued teetering about the room for food. I found a fair store of galettes behind the wooden coffee box and felt another pang of nausea combined with hunger. I removed both the box and the stack of three dry cakes and walked to the stove, still lit with half a pot of water still bubbling on the top and prepared a small cup of coffee to wash the stale flat-cakes down and wake myself out of the daze I had been walking around in.
I entered the study and collapsed in the desk chair, mildly abrasing my shoulder blades. I set the hot mug on the only empty space on the desk and looked over the seemingly endless expanse of papers. I frowned and closed my eyes as the room began to spin in my mind as I looked at the comments and criticisms on my very important work. I had thought of screaming at him, he did not see how or what I was trying to do; he did not understand and I damned him for it. I decided to persist no matter the obstruction, I embarked on this not to make friends, I believed him to be a fool and that was fine with me because I would become smarter and realize truth. I would become enlightened as he floundered in the dark.
I gathered the papers, resolutely organizing them and then tapping the edges of them on the surface of the desk. I stood with my cup in one hand and my work in the other and began to pace. I paced along the outside of my rug with my head bent. My neck ached from its weight and my ears seemed to be on fire. I had been sweating. I traced the intricate patterns of the Oriental rug, a gift from an unknown patron, and I came to see that the rug had a depth I had not previously perceived. I became curious and stepped out into it. Blackness took me for a moment but when I came back into the light, I believe I was sitting at the window, watching bundled forms with lizard faces and humps on their backs. The humps must have been their tails, carefully coiled or draped over their backs, scaly and cold. There were other things walking the streets, cockatoos with their feathers slicked back under brown and pink and pale blue caps, monstrous walrus’ with their girth restricted under thin overcoats.
I looked about the room for a moment and realized nothing. What had just happened? I was back in my bed, under the blankets and dressed in my bedclothes. I knew I had no recollection of getting to this point, and I was drenched in a cold sweat, my black hair stringy and plastered to my skull in ringlets. There was fading sunlight peering through the curtains. And my world spun for an instant as I tore the soaked sheets and blankets from my body and fell to the ground on bent hands and knees vomiting. After the bile had ceased its eruption from my throat, I collapsed face down in the vile puddle. It is from this position, acid and putrid assaulting the inside of my nostrils, body and clothing soaked in their own fluids, mouth dry and gasping, that I illustrate what happened. Or did not happen. It was all a fever dream. But the importance is vital. I am not mad. And the dream has convinced me that dreams are distanced and connected to the waking life. I do not have red curtains, nor do I drink coffee, and I have not submitted any part of my manuscript, my thoughts and meditations, to any publishers or editors. I have proved my own mind’s clear perception through untruths and muddled images.