Dreamer

I am a dreamer, and dreamers dream; they dream regardless of whether or not their dream becomes reality or not. A dreamer's head is in the clouds, he is an idealist in a world of harsh realities and truths where fairness, justice, and freedom are all things that are unattainable in any complete, untainted form. A dreamer dreams about what should be in opposition to what is; he is the quiet rebel against that which is unchangeably corrupted by man and by darkness, so in darkness, he dreams. He dreams of lands that yield enough food to feed the masses, even the poor; of kings and rulers who keep their word and care for their subjects as they would their own children (or as they should their own children); of a natural world that does not violently destroy random lives at some furious whim; of courts that find only the guilty truly guilty and met out punishment that duly fits the crime, reforming the criminal if it can be done and taking just action if it cannot; of love that does not taint with time and circumstance and temptation and misunderstanding; of stability and means in life if one were only so bold as to work to achieve it, where men who work for a goal, a dream, never go unrewarded; of a time when men will be men and women will be women and they will be partners, creating a better substance together than if they were apart. This is what the dreamer dreams, and I am a dreamer, a dreamer of a balance, of fairness, of love and friendship that, once declared, will never be withdrawn or taken back. And my heart is in these ideals though they will never come to fruition in my lifetime nor in my descendant's lifetimes and neither in theirs nor of those in turn.... And so I wonder why the human mind can picture these things, can hope for these things, can come up with these things if they are not in the world, and I think it is due to the uniquely human imagination; the imagination produces many things that are not in the world, and perhaps ideals are one with centaurs and elves, the lost city of Atlantis and the magic of the Grimm fairytales. Perhaps the imagination, the ability to dream of that which has no place in this harsh world, is left over from Man's time in paradise, or from a time before each of our births where we were in another realm either Heaven or someplace else, some place very like that, where things were perfect, where ideals were not extinct and not foolish things to hope in for they were all around, abundant as the fruit of the Garden. I am a fool of fancy, a dreamer, a hopeless romantic; call me these things and you would not be a liar, deny me these titles and you would deny the truth though there is as little truth in the dreams I bear, but much hurt in bearing them, such as Love. Due to this ideal head in my dreams, my heart, reality fell short, fell far short, and the resulting pains, sometimes I think, were no one's fault but my own for holding so high a goal, a dream so far out of reach of mortal hands, flesh and blood and bone. So I staunched my ability to dream, for a time; my heart was dead without them, the sun lost its warmth and the world seemed a cruel ball of mud spinning on to the whims of Chance and Time with no true love, design, or plan beneath its crude exterior. My fears fed on themselves, themselves being the product of pain which was the source of my fears, and grew. I saw my own eyes in the mirror and they were dull, dull like those who always called me a dreamer, a fool to fancy, a hopeless romantic; they had been right...or were they still. Night calls dreams forth whether you wish them or not, though most forget them with the morning light which wipes away the fog of dreams yet the cobwebs of them are left though the full sparkling fine web has been swept away; at night I knew I still dreamed, and I did not forget some, though I still pushed those memories aside for reason's sake. Reason cared not for my pain, for my pain was not logical, the things I mourned where never real, so why should their be tears, and I realized that even in my denial, even in my pain, I was a dreamer, and that I had mourned the dismissal of dreams, hopes, and aspirations, but there had been no death; they had merely stepped over the threshold and out of the room, gave me space to heal without rubbing the wound raw, without being like salt, thus making Time my balm. However, though I realized how much I needed such folly, such goals and aspirations though they brought with them pain for their conflict against the world as it is, I could not call them back into the room. Time, in giving a numbing balm, had also taken from me the courage and the knowledge of how to call them back, to believe in them again, to open the door to them again, welcoming them as the old friends they were; though the world though of them as liars, I saw them as my soul's inner light, an innocence that I did not want to be without or lose, for time, I knew, would continue its work on me, improving the distance between me and my dreams, improving the locks on the door and the complications in them. But I am a dreamer, and a dreamer dreams no matter if his dreams come to pass or do not, and so when there was a knock, though it took effort, time, and courage, I opened the door at last, and the-one-who-had-lightly-knocked stepped toward me, carrying all of my injured dreams, like invalids, in his arms, and his eyes were like mine; they reflected the same pain and the same near-disillusionment as I. I am a dreamer, a hoper, an aspirer, and the ephemeral webs which invisible lines weave between the stars in the Dreamer's nighttime sky are more real than those that are the handiwork of the spider.