This is my Dreamville sign.

When I go to sleep, I go through the Astral Plane to Dream City. Sometimes I call it Dreamopolis, Dreamington, Dreamburg, Dreamascus, New Dream City, San Frandreamcisco, and so on.

Dreamville, however, looks nice in a comic book stlye thought bubble, all one word to take you to a whole new world.


This is me going to sleep. I'll tell you about that night's path to Dreamville.

The dream began on a train. I was sitting close to the back of the first car. A family of four hopped from the car behind me toward the conductor. They converse. The children look out the windows at the passing landscape and so I. We are not in The City, having passed out of it a few minutes ago and are now moving up one of the high hills that surround the city on three sides, framing the island strewn bay. (Though this is all subject to change.) We are moving south. The children marvel at the steep drop down the sides of the hill, how the train, a BART car (How fitting) could topple down so swiftly...but soon they sit down and cease paying attention to the possible danger. They read picture books and I gaze out the window at the ever shifting geography of the urban maze beneath me. The Rook, the grand tower at the center of the city, grows taller to try and glimpse a bit of the sun's rays before it finally sets beneath the western horizon.

We reach the station. It's name, like all the stations, is an indecipherable symbol made of countless, nearly cuneiform lines. I exit, compelled to. Often the dream makes you do things that you would not otherwise. I never want to have a fully lucid dream. It's so much more real if you don't know what you're doing. I exit through the turnstile and walk down the steps. There is no street, not much of anything, really, just barren cliffs, badlands, but I have paid my fare, I must make the best of my location.

I walk south, further away from the city, following the path of the train tracks. Another train goes by as I try to cross the tracks, a bullet train. Somehow I retain the reflexes to evade it, and end up on the other side, watching the massive metal beast fly down, a perfect silver line...

Across the tracks lies another set of steps, stone, chiseled into the rock by a strong hand. Black rock cracks beneath my boots as I move toward the steps. They are unadorned and are framed by a rock tunnel. I enter and notice depressions on the sides, rectangular, colored slightly differently, and shaped roughly the size of a human. The tunnel eventually evolves into a perfectly cube shaped room that lacks a back wall. Instead, it is open, with a Winchester-esque staircase that goes up into nothing, and looks out at a city, but not the dream city. No, this room looks out at good old San Francisco. I can see the bridges, both Sutros, The Pyramid, Coit...I can see my homes and the dwellings of everyone and everything important. I can see the Labyrinth, though that would normally be concealed. I remember the placements of chance meetings, the patterns of flotsams, the paths of friends and characters...From the maddening geometry of the city, I can pick out near anything. The city belongs to me, I know the city because the city knows me...

From the top of the cold cube's stairs, I stare out at the city for many minutes, listening to the wind whisper. Soon, the whisper becomes literal, the wind speaking "whisper, whisper" over and over again until it transforms into "Whisper, Whisper" and undergoes a metamorphosis into "WHISPER, WHISPER" and finally "WHISPER! WHISPER!"

I am frightened. WHISPER! No, the WHISPERS! that I am breathing, WHISPER! they are formed from only fear, I am WHISPER! I am terrified, WHISPER! I jump back, falling from the stairs on my back onto the cold cube's floor. WHISPER! I ache. WHISPER! I burn. WHISPER! I jump up, WHISPER! I look around, WHISPER! fight WHISPER! or flight, WHISPER! this is my mantra, I leap back, WHISPER! I leap forward, WHISPER! to each side, WHISPER! for a way out of the cube, somehow ignoring the way that I arrived, but finally, to the tune of "WHISPER! WHISPER!" I find it, I jump forward toward it "WHISPER! WHISPER!" and further, and further...whisper...

San Francisco has grown dark, the cube had become engulfed in Hollywood shadow, telegraphing in darkness with dark blue instead of black, and I put foot over foot, back to the tunnel...

There are things in the tunnel. Quick things, human shaped, human sized. I can see through the haze of whispers and dark that the depressions in the walls, they have opened, and a constant stream of shadows move through. They seem to not even be there, slightly see through, cast on the air itself...

And I've got to pass them. That's what I've got to do, that's exactly what I have to do...

And they must be the ones who are whispering. But I get my courage together. I get off my ass. I jump up, I don't look at San Francisco. I time everything just right and move through each of the four streams one by one, paying close attention to the speed of the shadow's dances, the way that each stream alternates in direction, the way that ones seems to go backward, another turns in circles, and so on...

Something awful would have happened if I'd touched them. I knew that much.

I danced through the four streams of shadows, almost too easily, like the dream was just carrying me through, like it was supposed to happen, like I was just walking the right path at the right time, and, there, in the end, I was perfectly alright.



And I wake up in my bed, curled up in an orange sleeping bag with four blankets on top of it, looking out at the bright pink house across the street. It's still pretty early. The sun's just dawned.

I'm home.