Book browsing – a dream
I’m taking an online course about building a daily creative writing habit. The instructor introduced us to the Dream Delivery Service, a project by Mathias Svalina. Every day he writes dreams and delivers them to subscribers for a month at a time.
In class, we spent a few minutes writing a dream. It was both difficult and fun. I liked the exercise, so I wrote another dream, below. Enjoy.
You turn the page and keep reading. Your eyes skip down, skimming. You catch yourself and go back to the top of the page. You keep reading and you feel your focus skipping, just like your eyes were.
You know why. You can’t get into the story. The protagonist is written well. A young woman full of joy but not able to find a true partner in the love story. Too much will they?…won’t they?…and you’re not enjoying it.
You stand up and walk across the library. As you pass huge windows in the entrance, you notice it’s night time. You can’t see the moon through the windows but the stars are bright and shimmering. You keep walking, past the bank of computers, turn the corner, and walk up to the card catalog. The drawers are stacked so high, taller than you, but that’s okay. The ones you need are right in front of your hands.
You open a small drawer and find a series of tacos inside. All hard shell, placed in a row. The smell of warm chicken and beef fills the air.
You pick up a taco and start eating it, right there in front of the card catalog. With each bite, a book title pops into your head.
A biography.
A sci-fi novel.
A travel guide.
A series of plays.
You finish eating the first taco and pick up the second one. Again, each bite makes a book title flash in your mind. You concentrate harder as you chew, enjoying the taco, the way hearty flavors dance with bright citrus tangs. As you focus, you also see catalog numbers in your mind. The location along with each book title.
Still hungry, you pick up the third taco, taking careful bites so you don’t make a mess. Now you’re used to it: bite, book title, catalog number. A gentle nudge, a flash of words. You notice you aren’t remembering the titles. You see them too briefly. But that’s okay – you’re just browsing.
Done with the third taco and feeling content, you decide you’re done looking for something else to read. You close the card catalog drawer.
You walk back through the lobby and this time you notice blurry shadows on the floor.
The library is emptying and you walk out behind another patron. As you step outside, you notice a chill in the air that gently kisses your cheek.
You turn to walk home and just off the sidewalk, at the base of a tree, you see a book leaning against the trunk. You pick up the book and its weight feels perfect in your hands. You read the cover and this is it – this is the story you were looking for.
