The Waking Dream

I dream when I'm awake, and live in the real life when I'm asleep. The sounds of crickets chirping mix with the wind. Across time, I drift; unsure where to go I sift along the sands of time. The Grandfather Clock across the horizon's edge ticks till the universe ticks no more. I awaken in the nineteenth century. Compared to my own timeline, it takes some getting used to seeing nothing but wooden shoes and horses in carts. Here lies this old upstart, kicking herself in the can. Kicking herself out of time.

I met a girl, no much past seventeen, who had slept outside of the general store. Her dirty locks fall onto the dirty dirt roads, dripping from the previous week of rain. I look at my digital watch, something that would be beyond the comprehension of those in this neighborhood of the nineteenth century, yet in my neighborhood of the twenty first it is already taken for granted. Just down the road from the old barbershop, long out of business in my neighborhood, you can still see the imprints of klompen having dug into the dirt as girls play hopscotch and jump rope. Youth in my neighborhood play with machine guns, and digital scopes. Yet here behind the world of White Night Flower, where the old medicine and magic remain, children still play with wooden trains. It used to be children would barely know of what the devil was, this being obscured by false teachings by con artists. And yet now the only scam the young experience is the promise of life.

They used to dream of a world beyond the rainbow, with dwarfs and fairies, yet now they dream of simply having bread to eat not getting soaked by the rain. I walk across multiple time lines, like it's the next neighborhood over. Back then they marvel at the lawn mower, and yet in my own they have a basic income while watching robots do their daily deeds. Gone were the days of riding one's noble steed down to the general store. Gone were the days of pillories, and hunting wild boars. Yet one supposes this is for the best. And now as I take off my top hat, I bow to my new acquaintance. – A good day, my lady.

– Bread, I need bread.

I remove a baguette from my hat. And my pet cat pops into existence. – But Clocks, are you sure it's a good idea to mess with the time line.

– It is no matter, she'll die some other way instead. And up, up, up I walk across this road.

Me and my pet cat hop into the forth dimension, and arrive at the edge of the twenty first century of the seventh year. Here holographic virtual reality's price has increasingly gone down the tube. Gone were the days when one tuned into the local radio channel. And down, down, down flew my pet cat. He then went splat onto his belly fat. – Home again, mow.

– Home again, indeed Sneaker. I'm craving some Chinese food.

A few weeks previously, I had gone to get some Pizza at Oak Ridge. Yet now I could scarcely imagine eating more than salad with bacon bits. And as I fall asleep into the world of the real life, I find my head swimming, swimming, and swimming into a perpetual future. The future goes by slower for me, despite how day by, day, day, and more days the fourth dimensional clock makes each day go by so fast. I take an oven baked banana peel, and eat it. And I could scarcely remember what went on the next hour and a half. Except that I was back on the couch, dreaming of paper airplanes and binary code. My pet owl pecked at my should. – I'm hungry, feed me. Said the owl. I gently brushed its feathers. Indeed, I must remember to feed the owl, as it has helped many a children leave the Winter forest, for many a Winter Fire Fare. I have seen many children everywhere, across all points in time; time itself I barely understand. Only those now here I am its embodiment. And at my whim I can make ancient technologically advanced ruins erode over time, and motivate archaeologists to proclaim Egyptians used bronze chisels to carve away the sandstone of another era of brightness.

I had inspired the muses, the muses inspiring the ancient Greeks. And motivating them to send the ancient Persians up shit creek. Yet now as watch the mountains go by, I long for a solitude above all solitude. I've seen future while cities become volcanic, from an earlier era where salad was sold organic and charged for many times they're worth do to extreme "free market" capitalism. The robots of the old era forming the inspiration for legends about dragons. And tap dancing stories of ancient bards on the sea.

I am what makes your world move.

I am time itself.

In the Kingdom by the sea, I see old poet mourn the loss of Annabelle Lee. And young women, the reincarnation of them, seeing their lover of another time, get pregnant by another man. The woman spends her day programming along the shore in binary blobs. She dines on Grouper and Flounder inside from the cold wind, and dreams of code and alien spaceships flipping her underwear upside down. I've never tasted fudge, although I assume it must taste of chocolate peanut butter. I see a store that sells Crocs, and has a small time bookstore. There is also Carolina Reaper hot sauce. With wood emboss, I tap my shoes into the store. And gently use my dental floss. – Oh man, I am craving some fudge today. But my cat, who also popped into Pawley's Island, suggested I not have some, because I would make it rot. And the ladies that tend the shop would wonder whether they made it correctly.

Well I suppose there isn't any time for that.

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