I dreamed I had a house, big and strong, with many rooms for all I loved to live in. I dreamed I had a house that was all I imagined it could be, with every convenience in the whole wide world at my touch, wherever I walked within it. And when I awoke, I understood a thing about dreams. Even when the dream is exactly how you may have asked for it — down to the last nuance — it will never be enough just to dream it. When a dream turns out perfect in your head, you want a piece of that in the real of life. For a broken fragment of a dream that happens in the world — for a touch of magic that startles you just because it is — a person could give up dreaming altogether. Not that it is done, but who wouldn't make that trade? Let me be a little bit hero if someone else will know I was.
I dreamed I had a house, big and strong, but when I awoke, I found only the somber disappointment that the dream was over. I never had the dream again; I didn't need it again. Once to dream that I had all I wanted to have was enough: the "imaginary perfect" tense I need not constantly hear spoken in its ornate dialog, to accommodate my ears to the poetry I desire. The "reality imperfect" tense speaks gruffly the words I must to listen to, in tones that are harsh to my senses — and there is little poetry in its story. I listen intently, though: sometimes (in the barest breath) the voice of the world speaks a phrase familiar to me, an expression floating down from the dream into gravity of the world, made hard like all that is truth. Those rare times are like waking up when you're already awake.
