I woke up sweating and terrified from a dream in which all the multitude of things hanging by a thread in my life came crashing down. In the last scene I was walking through a hall looking for a woman who would tell me if Mary had passed her exam, an exam on which the her newly started nursing career was dangling. The woman was seated at the back of a crowded auditorium. She happened to be one of my colleagues, who constantly frustrates me with her ineptitude and silliness. I knew her judgment would be final. She looked at me as I walked past with a stern expression her head swinging dolefully from side to side. I felt the darkness and fear fall upon me as I rushed to get out of the auditorium. I woke up and heard the soft yet insistent snores of my Mary beside me and knew that it was my fears of deadlines and paperwork and feelings of frustration that were represented in the dream.

I love my job much of the time, but sometimes it is a weight made of details, little loose-ends all needing to be tied. As I lay there thinking of the things that I have to do and worry about. I realized that I had made the dream about Mary’s failure when it is my little loose-ends I am worried about. And this phrase came into my head out of nowhere. I guess maybe from the mind games I had been writing. About the Red King dreaming Alice and Tweedledum.

“I am the dreamer dreamed.”

I took it to mean many things. I am the dreamer, author of the dream. I am part of the dream, an agent of the plot as it were. Then I started to think about the novel I will write in November, and ideas started coming to me so fast and fascinating that filled my head and left no room for all those hanging loose-ends. This is how I know I am a writer.

I am the dreamer dreamed.

And my dreams are what keep me sane even when they scare the hell out of me.