NervousMan Walks and Thinks about Dreams

The next day, NervousMan walked along the city street to the bus stop looking down, frowning, and thinking about his thoughts.

For a few lost moments, NervousMan watched the sidewalk move evenly under his feet. Then, over and over, he had an image of himself walking along the sidewalk staring wide-eyed at the ground, and he imagined that he looked peculiar to those around him.

At this point, he would come to, and would look up at the people passing by around him.

Sometimes, people would look at NervousMan and NervousMan would wonder what they were thinking.

Othertimes NervousMan would just look at other people.

He wondered if the people around him had dreams too, and if those dreams were like his.

NervousMan had been reading his book from the library and it talked about dreams.

In fact, it seemed to be saying, amongst many other things, that life itself was just a dream.

This notion seemed to remind NervousMan about a dreamy song about a boat he once heard in his childhood, but he could not remember what it was.

"Life is but a dream", thought NervousMan.

Life is but a dream.

NervousMan's frown softened slightly and he turned a corner. Crossing the street, coming toward him, he saw a young Asian couple, each not older than 25, striding toward him.

"In love," NervousMan thought, and then NervousMan froze, not wanting to run into them as they passed by, smiling to each other and not noticing NervousMan at all.

From behind him, NervousMan heard the couple giggle to themselves.

Above NervousMan's head he watched a large yellow and black butterfly fluttering wildly to stay afloat.

NervousMan's eyes widened, and without thinking, he smiled.

The pretty butterfly flitted over NervousMan's head, dipping slightly over him, and then disappeared into some tree branches way up above his head.

NervousMan glanced over and saw a man watching him from a car that was waiting for the light to change. The man smiled at NervousMan. He must have been watching NervousMan look at the butterfly. After a moment, the light changed and the man, still smiling, drove on.

Lately, NervousMan had been noticing many people walking hand in hand and smiling happily, glad to be together with each other. Perhaps, they were glad to be alive.

More and more, it seemed, NervousMan had been noticing... pleasant things.

NervousMan wondered if perhaps he was feeling better, in general, because he felt happy for the happy people, instead of being left out of their happiness. Maybe things were like the book said, that everything he saw around him was his own dream. A 'projection' of himself, in a dream.

If NervousMan felt less nervous, then he noticed pleasant things. Or perhaps it was his noticing pleasant things that made NervousMan less nervous.

But maybe it was both... like a circle. One thing causing the other.

Hmmmm. Maybe there was something dream-like to it. Maybe NervousMan was walking around in a dream, really.

If that were true, then everything around him, including the happy couples, and Ned and Jenny and well, even the mean neighbor, and the man in the car, ALL of them WERE part of NervousMan, and NervousMan was part of them. It was all the same dream.

Meanness, nervousness, niceness, pleasantness, even nastiness... they were all part of the dream too. Just in the way that the dragon, which NervousMan was hiding from in his dream the other night, that was part of NervousMan's dream.

A dream within a dream.

Cars honked around NervousMan and from blocks away he could hear the sound of construction going on. A truck roared past him on the city street and NervousMan could smell the exhaust and it burned his sinuses. NervousMan looked up and saw a huge crane above his head that was colored yellow. Part of the crane, a very long part, jutted off-balance out into the pale blue sky, several stories high.

NervousMan frowned and wondered why it did not fall over.

NervousMan walked on thinking back again to his dream from the other night.

How, NervousMan thought, could part of a dream, like the dragon, hide from another part of the dream, which was him him, in the dream? How could that be? Why didn't the dragon just "know" where NervousMan was, in the dream, if he and the dragon were coming from the same mind?

How could one part of the mind, fear another part of the mind?

And if all this were a dream, thought NervousMan, looking around at the people passing him left and right, the buildings, the cars, the trucks, the sidewalk... how could anything hide from anything else?

How could it be that this ... 'dream' ... didn't just 'know' everything else in the dream that he saw around him?

Perhaps, that was the level called 'God', thought NervousMan. The part of the dream that dreamt the dream, and that knew everything in it.

Maybe... 'God' was dreaming. Dreaming... all this.

NervousMan walked on watching cars pass him on the street. At any moment, thought NervousMan, any of the cars, for all he knew, could come up over the curb and squash NervousMan flat.

NervousMan frowned.

"Someday", thought NervousMan, "I will die". That is a truth.

NervousMan stopped walking.

"When that happens, will I just... go to sleep? Or will I wake up?"

Was NervousMan the God of his own dream??

NervousMan stood in the middle of the sidewalk, thinking and looking down at the ground and rubbing his chin lightly, his eyes very far away.


People passed NervousMan on the street, some glancing very briefly at him, a bit nervously, as they passed on... lost in their own worlds as they chatted on their cellphones and listened to their iPods or thought their own thoughts.

NervousMan looked up, and watched them pass by.

And after a moment or two, he walked on too.

NervousMan, in the Theater

NervousMan found himself in a dark theater of vast size.

NervousMan could feel the soft lush material of the seat pressing against his back through his clothing and his hands gripped the solid armrests of the seat he was in.

The light of the screen streamed forth from the projecter in white dancing beams that pierced the darkness of the theater.

NervousMan realized that he was looking at his own face, as if he were a floating: an unseen observer in the theater observing himself observing the screen.

He was both! The person looking at the screen, and the person looking at the person looking at the screen.

How could this be, thought NervousMan?

And then NervousMan remembered that he was still dreaming.

NervousMan's point of view changed again in the dream and now he saw things as if he were in the projection booth.

Now, he was observing two 'NervousMan's', the one seated and watching the screen and another floating about the theater and observing the first NervousMan watching the movie on the screen.

From his vantage point in the projection booth, NervousMan looked up at the screen in the theater.

The film onscreen showed NervousMan in the projection booth watching the other two NervousMan's in the theater, as if the camera were just over the projection-booth NervousMan's shoulder and was then projecting what it saw onto the screen.

NervousMan, in the projection booth, watched the projection-booth NervousMan on the screen of the theater. NervousMan waved his arm and the NervousMan onscreen waved back.

NervousMan blinked and the shot onscreen changed. NervousMan saw his own face, in close up on the huge screen. He looked up and the screen-NervousMan regarded the projection booth NervousMan as if looking into an enormous projected mirror.

"What if I were in the theater?" thought NervousMan. And suddenly, he was. Feeling the seat against his back, and the hard armrests under his arms, looking up at the scene onscreen.

"What if I were floating and watching myself?" thought NervousMan. And suddenly, he was. Floating just inches away from his seated self which looked at the screen as if swimming underwater in a medium he could breathe.

NervousMan floated up, up, up toward the ceiling of the theater his arms waving about in the darkness, his body glided through the light of the projecter.

NervousMan could see his tiny self way below him, the only one in the theater, a tiny figure seated there watching the screen.

NervousMan smiled. NervousMan was up very high.

"What if I fell?" NervousMan thought suddenly.

And then NervousMan woke up.

NervousMan Dreams Dreamy Dreams in the Dark Darkness

Shoulders slumped, and feeling dejected, NervousMan walked back into the darkness of his apartment and sullenly reached behind the blind and closed the glass partition of his window with a soft 'THUMP'.

"I must learn to be more quiet," thought NervousMan.

Being quiet was good. NervousMan enjoyed quiet anyway, because noise made NervousMan nervous. To sit and to be still and to be away from noise and dust and the mean people outside, these things were all good, thought NervousMan.

Very softly, outside his closed window NervousMan could hear the sound of a siren off in the distance.

Perhaps, thought NervousMan, someone somewhere was having an emergency.

Yes, of course, thought NervousMan. Why else would there be a siren if someone, somewhere wasn't in trouble for some reason?

But NervousMan didn't know what these things were. He was glad that, at least for now, he could be quiet and not be in trouble. The way he had got into trouble with the mean neighbor.

NervousMan listened carefully. Outside the window, from somewhere down below, he could hear the mean neighbor talking to someone else. NervousMan thought he heard the words '...shifty-eyed little freak'...' being said.

NervousMan frowned and felt sad.

NervousMan walked around his dark place, quietly, thinking to himself.

Walking past the mirror in the hallway, NervousMan could barely make out the reflection of his own shape.

In a way it was nice, in the dark. Because NervousMan could not see himself, or much of anything else.

NervousMan didn't like to be in the dark all the time, just like NervousMan didn't like to be in the light all the time. Sometimes the light, or the dark, was pleasant, but if the light or the dark continued for too long, it made NervousMan nervous.

Too much of anything made NervousMan nervous.

NervousMan paced a little bit more in the still darkness of his apartment, thinking about his thoughts, and then decided that perhaps he should take a nap.

Even though it was the middle of the day, NervousMan felt tired from being so nervous. Dealing with the mean neighbor had worn him out.

And so NervousMan took off his robe, and got into bed in the dark and pulled the covers up to his chin. He stared off into the silence of his room and after a while he began to dream.

In the dream, NervousMan was still in his apartment but the apartment was much bigger and had many many rooms. The ceiling was very high up almost out of sight, NervousMan saw.

NervousMan had a sense that there were mean people outside of his apartment who were looking for him. If they found him, NervousMan knew, they would be very mean to him indeed.

NervousMan ran from room to room, trying to find a place to hide before the mean people came.

Somewhere in the dream-apartment of many many rooms, NervousMan heard a roar of a great monster. It sounded very very scary and loud and NervousMan was scared and frozen with great fright.

NervousMan peered down a dark hallway in the apartment of his dreams and saw the long scaly green tail of a green dragon disappear into one of the rooms.

The dragon was looking for NervousMan!

"Quickly! quickly! I must find a place to run and hide from this dragon or it will find and eat me!" NervousMan thought.

NervousMan looked down and saw that he was carrying the book 'Your Immortal Reality', which he got from the library, in his hand.

NervousMan blinked.

And then something strange happened.

NervousMan realized that he was dreaming a dream. After all, this was not his apartment. His apartment was only one bedroom and this was many. And there was no such thing as a dragon even though he had just seen one walk into one of the other rooms of his place.

NervousMan looked at the wall in front of him and reached out to touch it.

It seemed solid and it looked real. There was nothing else here to be seen. Then, NervousMan looked at the floor. He noticed the threads in the carpet and he bent down to feel the texture of them with his hand. How real it was. And yet, how could it be if he was dreaming.

NervousMan looked at his hand and it seemed to pulsate and warp in front of his eyes.

Now, he KNEW that what he was seeing was not really real. How could such things be if they were real? NervousMan had to be dreaming.

From far off in the apartment of many rooms, NervousMan heard the howl of the dragon bellow and bray. He imagined the cruel visage of the beast as it turned down a nearby hallway.

NervousMan must run! But to where?

NervousMan was nervous.

When NervousMan stood up he saw graffiti writing on the white wall in front of him.

The words spelled out a phrase that NervousMan had heard somewhere before.

"One Bad Apple Spoils the Whole Damn Bunch"

He was sure that was what it said, but as NervousMan took a second look at the words, they seemed to shimmer and change. NervousMan reached out to the words on the wall.

And then... before NervousMan knew it... everything changed.