 7 Mar 2004 @ 15:52, by ida
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Author(s): Quidnovi
Status: Last updated 30 March 2004
Message: The Inn of the Wild Ass (to be placed on the Map of Spindrift) is open to all. The ale is good and the company... Well, the company is up to you, isn't it? Feel free to visit any time (bring in some new character of your making), either right here on this post, in the comment section, or create a new post of your own (use the Rountable Chapter category.) Maybe Dusk or Garah will run into you, if they happen to be around where you are.
Consider this:
A million souls randomly selected.
A million of dreamers:
239,477 followers of the Ceturo-Dehjian faith,
231,201 faithful of the Bodo-Huddinist confession,
125,600 Ethno-Ammans,
60,133 Meiit’Sans,
A hundred Shamans,
A handful of Mages and a few Vrijis,
Thousands of prayers on thousands of lips.
To whom? To what?
Do we live in our dreams or in other people’s dreams?
Is there a Greater Dream? Who is the Grand-Dreamer?
A Psychic Gravitational Cradle? A Vectorial Sum?
An Oligarchy? A Monarchy?
Aaaah...take the reins of your dream, and you are a Sorcerer,
Interact with The Dream, and you are a Mage!
But of what do dreams dream? And who is that flute player?
And where are they going, these children, following silently?
— On the Color of Dreams, Garah, Master Archivist
[CXI: G^19, Library of Entelos]
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"Dusk-Twilight watches over you, you seldom miss a clue."
So said the message inside the second fortune cookie that I had asked the server to bring me. As it turned out, I was rather clueless tonight...but then "Dusk-Twilight" had always been a rather capricious muse.
Dusk is commonly believed, among many cultures, to be that time of the day when one may briefly catch glimpses of the unseen. I guess the Chinese culture is no exception.
Tradition has it that Fortune Cookies predate the Ming dynasty and were used to hide secret messages...The problem was that, for some strange reason I just so happened to have eaten mine that night—the first one brought to me—cookie, message and all. I felt rather silly about it, too. Perhaps I was absent-minded. Sleep-deprived? Bored out of my mind? All of the above?
It's not that I made it a habit to be distracted, but there were times, just like this, when the casual, incidental thing did drift off the radar of my senses. And not that anyone asked, but weird lapses such as this one were by no means a manifestation of senility or a development of one of those afflictions one usually associates with old age. Do I sound defensive? I shouldn't. After all I am only thirty-five.
And incidentally, my name is Dusk. Kind of odd, isn't it...?
So, do I believe in meaningful coincidences now? Synchronicity? Ah, but it is thoughts such as this that sent my mind wandering off and got me distracted in the first place.
This line of thinking invariably reminded me of Garah. "Where do our minds wander," would he ask, "and who is it, what is it, calling them?" The world within and without, one and the same, and yet never the same, like a quilt—a patchwork of wandering minds—yet something more and other than just a miscellaneous collection of incongruous parts, not a jumble—a mind-wave, perhaps—a wave of minds, all carrying with them, within and without, images of the world, of themselves—of others and themselves, in this world—a world we all call reality though we all realize to some degree, as we say that word, that it means something different to each and every one of us. We know that reality and the realities of these mind-images, these identities we are thus creating for ourselves, are fleeting, and loose, and ever-changing, constantly reevaluated, challenged by new perceptions, new needs, new sets of beliefs—mind and reality reflecting each other ad infinitum, constantly remaking each other. This reflection is the world in which we live. The gnostic mages of Entelos call it The Dream, or the dream of dreams.
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