The Threat of Waking

Was it designed to confuse me, lead me, or inform me-was the last choice mine or had I already sealed my fate by reading the first few lines? If an objective value had been placed on the conclusion, anything to make this seem less abstract, then the answer would be mine. Instead, I had only a question-"Am I awake... yet?"

The fact that I was asking lead to infinitely cyclical tangents of thought, each as reproachable as the next in that none lead to the answer I was looking for to begin with. Wakefulness, the state of consciousness in-between dreams, this was all I sought to confirm. Instead, I could confirm only two things, and neither in conjunction with the other: I have been dreaming, and I will be dreaming. These things seem rational now just as they have always seemed rational. But am I subordinating my understanding of reality to the experience of a dream, or are my dreams an intimate understanding of reality dredged up from a kind of omniscient subconscious entity existing within me, the dreamer?

Does the innate symbolism of the dream world really have any bearing on the goings-on of the world I am now in? Coincidences, perhaps even synergy between the dream world and conscious world have begun to multiply at an alarming rate. One night's visions of windswept plains are realized as I find myself pulling up to an abandoned farmhouse, performing a routine groundwater assay. What am I doing here? That's not my car. Nor should it be, it would seem, for I wake once more only to find myself in a jungle full of livid green foliage and chittering insects. A jungle? I've never left Colorado.

I wake again in a dingy motel-a place I recognize, looking out through the open curtains to see the sun beating down on a laundromat and a busy intersection. I groggily shuffle through the pile of dusty clothing covering the floor by my feet, only to find a small grey box. Opening the box, I find three vials with pink fluid in them, each labeled "Howard Farm Site" followed by a five-digit number. On the inside of the box's lid is a color-coded chart... Pink indicates a high concentration of lead. So the groundwater at Howard Farm is contaminated... Now what?

But that's not right at all. I was just dreaming about the assay, the jungle, and I must be dreaming again. The laundromat and intersection outside the window fade away into tiny points of light, as though I'm watching things from a cosmic scale. That can't happen. Memories of unrest, a paroxysm of frustrated weariness, the brief sight of a digital alarm clock and, slowly, asleep again.

Finally, I wake up where I belong. Reading. "Was it designed to confuse me, lead me, or inform me-was the last choice mine or had I already sealed my fate by reading the first few lines?"