journey to the big dipper (the severed branch #31, september 19, 2022)
I am still trying to get to you: I am so fucking desperate to see you. How many more lectures do I need to record? I love you.
I will never be able to express what this means to me: it was true what I felt; I was looking for someone. I thought I was deluded. ❤️
Above: A blurry view from a night walk (photo my own)
I am a rich woman now, which is to say that I finally command the capital which I require to find you. I gaze out at the Big Dipper from my sky palace, imagining you out there. Just outside the columns of colossal rectangular windows towering over me, bird armies majestically circle the high-tech cloud fortress in which I am ascending toward the edges of space. You have changed your identity, or maybe I have changed mine, but somehow we have lost each other. The memories of our past are new and disorienting, hopelessly fuzzy but precisely defined, without a shred of detail beyond the utter certainty that you have always been my destiny, although I have not seen you in decades. Though plagued by an urge to run away from each other, you and I have a great romance. Who fled first is something I cannot yet say because I do not know.
Memory, I remind myself, is not like a photograph, and yet I am ready to believe every impression of the past which is emerging in my mind. There are no images, no pictures, only crippling sensations of longing and nostalgia which provide the primary impulses behind every action I have taken to find you. Who are you? I have no idea; your face seems not to exist. But we always knew, it suddenly strikes me, that we would see each other in 2024. I am living the whole last 97 years right here with the bird armies who circle me, and I come to a blurry understanding of the impetus behind my life over the course of the past century. My entire being is constructed only from the abstract need to find you, wherever you are out there in the stars. That is why I have changed my whole identity, so that you won’t get wind of my approach.
The utter blackness of the universe replaces the blue sky. I clutch with regretful longing to my undesired place in space and time. I am not a young college girl anymore, seducing you to come “study” in my dormitory, where under the cover of our science finals we crafted the most diabolical spells to unleash upon our many Christian enemies. I am an empress now, actually; that is to say, I am a majority shareholder in a world governed by corporations. The heavily indebted and immobilized State has withered away, reduced to the ceremonial role of building roads and bridges, and my elite security forces supplement the unparalleled power of my sorcery. Here in this empty hall, dominated by stunning views of the Southern and Northern constellations, is where I hold court in the evenings with my closest confidants. But tonight I am drinking wine alone while gazing out into the stars of the Big Dipper, although the serenely flapping wings of my space-bird army occasionally obscure its light. You are orbiting one of those stars right now, aren’t you? That is the place you always told me you would go, and soon we will be there together.
I have searched for you for 75 years, my love, so that you have been my only real romance across all these decades. This is despite the painful truth that I have neither seen you nor heard from you even once in all that time. You betrayed me, even left me for dead, but I have never ceased to want you. I’ve never forgotten the way you abandoned me looking helplessly up at you from the surface of Mars; you ran way from me, you left me for her, simply because you thought that was best for me. But I know you are out there now, floating somewhere through that constellation which we always used to look at when we were camping. The same stars we promised we would visit together one day. And now, after having finally achieved the wealth which I amassed exclusively to find you, I have at last seized the technology I need to go forth. Mighty legions bow down before me and my purse. My officers and scientists, who are so obedient to me that they will die for the romance I crave, are even now charting our course to get to you. We will be old women together, and we will be happy at last.
In my memories you are a bright and luminous presence, more like a spirit than a person. I can remember your skin and hair, or at least what they felt like in my hands, although I would not be able to describe your contours, sizes, or colors. What I know is that we had something in our twenties which fused our souls into a shared space between us, so that right now parts of us are lost together somewhere in the staggering blackness between my star and yours. You must have felt the emptiness all these years as I have. I know because I remember the time it was you who came looking for me, and it was then that I changed my identity. I had become addicted to my misery and the story it gave my life; I had to make it to 2024 without seeing you, because then I would be able to stand here and say that I spent all those decades focused on this goal. For what else could I have worked or lived, aside from looking for you? What meaning would my career have if it wasn’t moving in that direction? But now, nearing the end of my life, it is time. Overwhelmed by my foolishness and the sadness it has caused me, I am crushed beneath the immense weight of regret at the very moment when I should be reveling in the climax. My officers, no doubt having completed their plans, come walking toward me from somewhere very far away, and I stifle the streaming tears which are beginning to flow from my eyes.
I am still crying when I wake up at 4:30 in the morning and realize I have to go to work. The emotions hit as strongly as the sensation of falling does at the end of other inter-dimensional travels; it seems absurd that someone could suggest this wasn’t real. Maybe it wasn’t me, but it was someone I became for a while. I quickly write down notes on my phone about each and every detail from the other world, hoping this practice will cultivate a heightened consciousness during the nights to come. I will remember this world in that one, and I will use such knowledge to my advantage. At work, it takes me a few hours to come close to stop believing in you, but even then, I know that the other world is an authentic part of my lived experience. For I truly was a woman then. I really was in command of that ship. I genuinely was in love with you. And I am anxious to launch my explorations of the galaxy, which knows me even if you don’t anymore, and I pass the day at work contemplating the necessary steps.
At my desk in the teacher work room, I complete an hour’s worth of research on the Internet about how to become more self-aware during my dreams. The journal has been my standard practice for the past few weeks, and I am cautiously considering others. I write bullet points immediately upon waking up, not daring to move too much lest some internal alteration obliterates the memory, and then I craft these notes into a narrative later. The more consistently I have done this, the more intense my dreams have become, at least in terms of how I am able to remember them, and I have felt myself developing increasing amounts of agency. Sometimes I can remember details from previous dreams and connect them to the current one, but not once have I yet achieved full awareness that I am in fact asleep. Instead of being conscious of a fantasy around me, the supposed fiction in my mind has simply become more real.
I have come to secretly believe that these dreams might be other dimensions. It’s an opinion I would not dare share with anyone aside from my closest friends, and in most cases not even then, because among them are several apostles of the sciences, staunch believers in experiments and materialism. They have faith in neurological delusion as an explanation for any experience which deviates from the limits they impose. I don’t want to talk about this with the people who believe based on reason; I want to discuss it with those who believe based on aesthetics and emotions, for this has become one of my guiding principles. How far will I go? Can I meet up with the genuine manifestations of my friends from the real world if we can only find each other in the dream world? About this, I am agnostic. There is no evidence for souls, yet most people believe in them. Because we experience our souls and others’ souls, and because our certainty about the soul had to be beaten out of us by scientists. So if I believe in something as vague and undefined as a soul (although I am not sure whether I do), is it really so far-fetched to also believe in an inter-dimensional dream world?
Something about all this deeply disturbs me, and it prevents me from truly committing myself to the project of lucid dreaming. There are so many other methods I could be employing beyond intensive dream journaling, such as frequent “reality testing” throughout the day in the “real world.” A friend of mine took the plunge once, though, and he shared a few terrifying incidents. He described being trapped inside these dream worlds for long periods of time, increasingly panicking that he might not ever wake up again. At one point, he told me, he had suddenly lost the ability to continue walking. When he looked back behind him, he saw half his leg perfectly severed and detached. It was frozen a few inches in the air, in the same position as if it had just stepped off the ground, and all he could do was stare at it for hours. And then there was a friend of a friend who claimed to have become trapped in a dream for years. He insisted he was trapped in there for what genuinely felt like a decade, and yet he had only been asleep for a night. My friend, accepting that this really happened, vouched for the source’s credibility. I wanted to believe, and my skepticism annoyed me. But even if I critically scrutinize the account during the day, it still joins the many monsters who haunt me after dark, so that the cautionary tale works upon me like a horror movie. Despite my longing to achieve yet higher levels of lucid dreaming, the idea of being trapped in there for years spooks me in my own bed, holding me back.
Tonight, as I fall asleep, I am sure to stay focused on the memories of my spaceship, my bird armies, and you floating around out there in the Big Dipper. But at the moment of my incarnation, I am a man having a passionate threesome with a beautiful naked princess and her sculpted male consort in the middle of the great receiving hall of an old Mughal palace. All around us the imperial orgy rages, only somewhat distracting me from the flesh of the man and the woman who are pressed up ever-closer and more ardently against me. I relish my position between the chiseled warrior and the emperor’s illustrious daughter, two people whom I have coveted since the moment I arrived here some years ago. The frenzied sensuality all around me overwhelms my senses. I notice people casting aside their exquisite silk garbs, which are then soaked beneath the sweaty and beautiful bodies of the naked nobles and their guests. I struggle to maintain my focus on the eyes of the princess and her primary lover. And as our movements intensify, it proves easy. Even while the moans around the great chamber grow louder, the three of us are consumed by our lust for one another. It is as if the rest of this sinful festival weren’t even happening.
There are Roman soldiers looking on, I soon realize, from the perimeter of the palace, and there isn’t a ceiling above us. Overhead there is only the deep black of night, sprinkled with stars, and up there I see it again: the Big Dipper. A hazy memory from a different world begins to penetrate my consciousness. You have emerged again in my mind. Your face, figure, and hair are just as undefined as before, and I cannot figure out how I know you, why you matter, or what you have to do with the Big Dipper. I am certain we would have so much fun together if only you were down here. You would love this. But I know I shouldn’t be here. I should be looking for you. And yet I have no idea how I would go about it. I don’t remember anything else.
I’m screaming under the power of the man behind me, and I soon forget about you again. Then chaos begins to emerge from my periphery. Improbably, I begin to lose my focus on the princess and her consort, but it doesn’t matter, because both of them, though as yet refusing to disengage, are also distracted. The jungle is growing rapidly over the walls. Vines and tree branches are pouring over the brick, twisting and coiling toward the naked waists of my fellow revelers. A random Roman soldier suddenly snickers at me. “She won’t be a princess for long,” he says. And then a fleet of jets whooshes powerfully overhead, casting violent turbulence upon us all so that we immediately fall down from the euphoria of our complex interlinkages. Missiles and bombs smash into the ground around us. Fire balls cast a harsh, searing heat upon my skin. Bloody body parts rise up into the air. The living are screaming. Those without critical wounds are running frantic and naked toward the exit and out into the jungle, although some linger behind trying to find their clothes. As for me, I am simply standing here while the bombs fall, paralyzed by the man’s continuing touch.
A moment later, I am also running. A person from another world approaches me, and I dimly recognize him. He’s an American guy I studied with in Germany. A cool calm in his eyes, my old companion blocks my path. I try to get around him, but his movements are swift and nimble. My survival instinct compels me to shove him to the side. He grabs me by the arms and turns me back to him. I am slow and lethargic, hardly able to lift a hand, definitely incapable of screaming, and he shakes me around like a cloth. “Andrew,” he tells me, his face hopelessly contorted with the agony of indecisiveness, “should I study in Freiburg for another year? What do you think?”
I consider this for a moment as the explosions and blood-curdling screams continue around us. It’s true, I think, maybe I really should stay here for another year. But a group of American soldiers with assault rifles and rocket launchers are suddenly surrounding me, as if to protect me, while firing their weapons into the sky. An enemy helicopter blows up and crashes down onto the princess’s bed at the top of the steps. I look for her and the beautiful consort, but they are gone. Above her bed, I see the vast Milky Way, and in the middle of it all the stars of the Big Dipper. The sight of it sends a shiver of realization through me, reminding me that I need to be somewhere else. That’s when I realize that I still need to get my luggage from the hostel or I am going to miss my train, and the friend I am traveling with might leave me here.
“I have to get out of here,” I say to my old friend. “My luggage!”
I rush through the bustling streets of an Indian city I don’t recognize. When I wake up, I frantically reach for the ground, still trying to find my bag. When it hits me, I open my Notes app and record as much as possible before the details of it all fade away, as they are wont to do within minutes. It’s almost two in the morning, and I am now able to view the spaceship and the palace orgy from a rational perspective.
Knowing the fears which are holding me back from actually committing myself to this enterprise, I curse myself for still having such limited consciousness in the dream world. If only my awareness of my identity and reality were stronger, I would not have had such a dim recollection of your existence. After at least a few hours at the orgy, I would have fled to seek you out in the stars where you are hiding. Somehow, if only I had known myself to be in that world, I might have simply flicked a switch and found myself up there with my sky bird armies and my lieutenants, charting our course to the Big Dipper, certain that I was a woman again. Something tells me, however, that I would not have been able to do that, because that world isn’t a fantasy which bends to my whims as if I were a witch. It is a real place with rules of its own, and whoever I become when I am there, I am a different person in a different dimension. When I fall back asleep, I focus on the spaceship so that I might see the story through to the end.
But even after focusing on the Big Dipper, I soon find myself sitting at a table with a group of men in suits. The walls and floor around us are a completely unblemished white, almost blinding in their light, and the table is a bland light brown rectangle. The men in suits are in the middle of an important business meeting, or so it seems. One of them is standing at the head of the table. He is gesturing to a graph and making meaningless sounds with his mouth. The others nod and respond with similarly incomprehensible syllables. I glance down at my own clothes, sweats and a t-shirt, and I reprimand myself for having forgotten to dress up again. What excuse can I come up with now, I wonder.
Right then, they all notice me sitting there. They are staring at me with jaws dropped, as if I had just appeared from mid-air. That’s when it happens: I know that I am asleep and that I am dreaming. I know that I am in another world and that the scientists claim it’s all fake. I know all about the Big Dipper and the spaceship, the palace orgy and the battle that raged there. All that remains is to craft a way to teleport between the dimensions by my own sheer willpower or some other unknown mechanism I might find here, and then I will re-commence my odyssey to the Big Dipper.
The one right across from me pulls himself together. He seems to make an effort to interact with me as if I’ve always been here. Smiling, he gestures at the graphs and data points which cover one of the walls. “And you,” he asks me, “what do you think?”
“Oh,” I say politely, “I’m so sorry for the confusion. I’m not from here. I’m just visiting.”
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