Dream: Cheshire Cat Mage and Reality Police in Escher's Ascending Descending

I started this dream at the foot of a verdant hill with a friend and various temporary contemporary acquaintances; I'll henceforth, grudgingly, refer to them collectively as friends. I was faced with being utterly homeless. There was dense mist rolling all around the lush grass at our feet. Up on the hill I could make out a castle in the dawn's light. We climbed the hill to investigate the structure. It was like something out of Escher in its architectural complexity and contradiction.

Escher's pictures, brilliant though they are, just couldn't do it justice though. I know my own words are doomed to fail but I will try in the hope that I can at least convey the feelings this experience evoked.

The castle appeared derelict; the ruined walls were built from a patchwork of randomly shaped and sized stones all somehow moulded together and I could physically explore it. More than that, I could literally feel it all around me. The physical character of its exterior raced past me with a very fleeting immanence it seemed, or was it just that I wanted to hurry inside?

Inside I discovered that the castle only posed as a desolate ruin. Inside it was very much alive. We entered into a large roundish chamber that turned out to be a well-furnished bar. There were a couple of quiet drinkers sitting at the bar and an attractive blonde woman, about thirty, reclining nonchalantly behind it. I briefly made eye contact with one of the men at the bar, he looked like a kind of "hippie" college lecturer in his early forties. The large roundish and well furnished seating area round the bar was empty of people but sprouted multifarious veneered stairways that led to the room's second tier, a balcony of similar carved wooden beams.

My friends and I all chose our own pathways up the different flights of stairs to the balcony, there were more than enough alternatives for this to be possible. The stairs distorted space, I met my friend coming down the stairway I'd chosen as he climbed his own choice. He was smiling broadly at the illogic of it but I was subdued and must have appeared quite sombre. I ascended up the flight I'd chosen. I was aware that this was a sort of puzzle of the soul, as opposed to the intellect, I ignored my friends' inane whoops and calls, they were fascinated by the surreal nature of the place, but I just trod the path I thought best.

I met my friend again, he was stood outside the solitary wooden door which lead from the balcony and couldn't open it. I turned the doorknob and it opened for me. In order to unlock it I'd had to tread the stairs in a particular order. I'd had to take an illogical route along those illogical stairs.

I entered through the doorway and my friends followed me in eagerly. There were thieves among them but I had a reverence for the place and kept a close watch on them. The thieves seemed to feel that reverence too and I was surprised to note that they weren't attempting to steal anything. I wondered how long this could last.

In contrast to the bar below, the living quarters were quite spartan. It was very much bland fifties and early sixties era furnishing. There was a super-computer in there too; this was very seventies Radio Shack. Everything was minimalist and utilitarian. There wasn't a single bit of wasted space: the bathroom was tiny. Everything was just right, geared to a purpose. In the bathroom you either stood at the basin or lay in the bath, you couldn't swing a cat in there. In the computer room you either sat at the desk or used it as the hallway it was also intended to be.

I cast my friends out, sensing they didn't belong in here, the place was too "holy" for them. On my own, I felt I was better able to harmonise with it. I could appreciate it as an object d'art instead of continually having to watch in case they thieved something. I looked out a window and marvelled at the stonework, it now appeared a different building to the one I'd seen from without. Beyond this surface impression there was something that told me it was the same. The walls no longer appeared to be fabricated from the patchwork of random stones; they were now smooth as clay and decorated with intricate art deco patterns that somehow conspired to appear Gothic to the eye. I could see the intricacy of the stonework's carved lines. The castle, although it felt very real, and I didn't dispute its reality on the bricks and mortar level, was designed in such a way as to be a hollow illusion. Viewed from the outside, it had a phantasmal appearance of desolated luxury; while when viewed from the inside looking out, it appeared to be purely functional minimalist low grade housing with an old, rather than antique, quality to it, which was posing as a pristine palace.

The one luxury in the interior was a sort of recreation room. This was also very small and contained some old vinyl records, a modest number of books and cheap trinket type ornaments. There was a humble coffee table at its centre upon which sat something metallic, about two feet high, looking something like a seventies TV antenna. There was a couch and an armchair. I sat on the couch and became absorbed in the antenna device. As I gazed at it, the device sparkled into life sending blue "lightning" arcing upward toward the ceiling. This eventually ceased and this guy had materialised in the armchair opposite me. He had his legs crossed, a big grin on his face and looked like he absolutely belonged in that chair, as he had looked like he belonged in the bar below. It was the college lecturer type.

We began to talk and he explained that he was a reality criminal and using some sort of advanced mathematics to "hack" into various human realities in which he roamed at will. He told me was being pursued by the reality police, they, like he, travelled between dimensions but the technology he employed was jealously guarded by the authorities of whatever dimension he hailed from.

As if on cue a sinister chill descended upon me. He told me what I already knew, that it was the reality police, he also told me he had to disappear for a while. He vanished suddenly. As soon as the reality police had arrived, even though they hadn't materialised yet, I'd been aware of a disturbance in the tranquillity of our conversation. The voice of authority is ubiquitous and, even though it wasn't audible in this case, I "heard" that familiar barking tone. As I often do, I became "self-aware" and now knew I was dreaming. I felt I had to resist waking. I might never get the chance to return here if I did.

I was confronted by the reality police. Their arrival was quite opportune in that they distracted my mind and prevented me from waking. They were strange in this world of colour and light: they were as out of place as fifties black and white characters in an eighties colour film. That's what they resembled, g-men from the twenties portrayed by fifties Hollywood. They wore monochrome pinstripe suits and grey hats with black bands. They were both in their mid-thirties and it was difficult to extract a distinct identity for either from their tidy gleaming chalk pale faces. They regarded me like I was a bug in a laboratory; which is not to say with any apparent hostility, I was beneath this emotion even, contrary to appearances, were they capable of feeling it. They exchanged glances and transferred thoughts between themselves. As before, with the silent barking announcement of their immanent arrival, I couldn't make out the words, but I could grasp the essence of what they were thinking, that I was a mortal and somehow beneath their jurisdiction. They phased out of existence again.

Left alone I started to look through the collection of vinyl records and felt I found a kindred spirit among their owner. He returned in due course and we had a conversation about the records. I told him what they meant to me in terms of my biography, sharing little anecdotes and such. Explaining about my friends, past and present, and my aspirations in life. The guy told me that I didn't belong in my reality and this struck me as an immensely joyous revelation coming from him, even though I tell myself the same thing every day. From him it seemed to take on a significance which went way beyond the words I repeat to myself. And I believed him utterly, believing too that I will ascend beyond this relative poverty: no longer having to waste my time among the immoral, lazy and uninspiring wastrels that surround me on every side.

Once the mage sensed that I had absorbed this information he blinked out of phase with my reality once again, the smile on his face was broad, and like he was some kind of Cheshire Cat, his huge grin was the last part of him to disappear.

I awoke very peaceful and content.

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