I suppose that this is less exciting with the advent of Inception, but over the last couple of years the idea of dreams as alternate universes that we view in unconscious states has fascinated me. It is somewhat inspired, I suppose, but Proust’s fascination with the confusion of waking. We’re never really confused when we enter dreams, it’s only afterwards that they seem strange. I posted something about it last March:
(Multi-somnia)
Anyway, this is a continuation of that idea:
The Eyes Have It, But Who Has Them?
When he awakes, his eyes are his own. Every night they are taken. He hardly dares to close them. But sleep finds its way inside his thoughts, slowing them, cold hands on his neck massaging out tension and care. Then lids slip downward and he feels them begin to leave. The flashes of color, the sketches of old trains and film-grained men riding unicycles. Images unrelated sweep past those eyes as they slowly untangle blood vessels and sever nerves. And finally into darkness as ether begins the countdown.
Sometime in that blackness they must drag him away, down crooked hallways through anesthetic air. Through a doorway that catches his ankle as he passes and into a padded stock, arms dangling.
He’s forgotten who he was.
The scar is on your left wrist.
This is not your house.
But he looks out and sees it, and his hands seem familiar. He remembers the bent ring finger, caught in the high bar when he was eight. When she tells him she doesn’t know him, he cannot protest. He’s almost forgotten. And even as he accepts it, he wonders which man they drag off into the night. Will he awake to that or fall into sleep from this?
Feste's Lute 