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.