the camera of dreams.

this is a text i wrote a few years ago and with which i also participated in a group reading in bruehl with my literature club ('dieräuber77', named after the literal work of the past master goethe).

hope you like it.

the camera of dreams.

'we're from the same material of which our dreams are made of, and this small life is as short as a sleep.'
this was once said by a very smart person. now animated by this very sentence and a good friend of mine, i started to wonder about dreaming in general, life and sleeping.
why, for all the world, do we dream - and why does everybody dream in a different way?
have YOU ever thought about that?
it's not only about the issues ...




now before anyone of the 6 billions of mortals on this very planet falls into his own, private sleep and his own private dreaming, he thinks about something else.
everyone is busy with a different issue:
- stress at work
- a particularly fair day
- the weather
- puddles of love
- the death of a relative or a friend ...

but there's another question to ask: why does everybody dream from a different angle?
now we should scrutinise that.
how do you see yourself in your dream; do you see yourself as the main charakter in an own, private film - do you see yourself so to speak standing in front of you; or do you see everything 'lifelike' - from the perspective of your eyes?

now your soul weaves stories for each of us, and our brains work up all the things we got to know or accepted over the course of the day. and while sleeping our head doesn't stop thinking further.
is that the truth about or the answer to why single aspects of the day reoccur in our dreams ... ?
because some people believe the dream to be the processing space of their ill-conceived depths of their souls. but - is there any soul at all?
i believe it so.
and this is also important for the further discussion.
where is your soul based ... have you ever thought about that?
now your head is responsible for analytic thinking - the majority accepts that as the truth.
but the human brain does not only work up logical lines of thought - it is bicameral: it is made of the logical-analytic and the creative half.
so, does your soul sit, as long as it exists, have a seat beside your creative, right half of your brain? ... or rather beside your heart, because it contains all the unconscious, yearnable - all that we really want (to have, because we cannot have it ...) ?

dreaming belongs to life just like the air we breathe and the food we consume.
do we experience things in our dreams just as if we experienced them in reality?
do you feel while dreaming?
what do you feel while waking up?
what's life but a dream ... ?
now a dream could also reproduce an unacknowledged fear. or it could express uncompensated moments of dread. or longings not allowed to be lived out.
what about the man whose cousin gifts him with two balloons in his dream?
now another aspect of dreaming is the productive one.
every dream is different.
every dream is felt different IN YOU.
now if we want to explain it quite blasphemously, we could say that WE are those, who get productive while dreaming.
we can build an own world for US, one that doesn't exist universally. but it is a fact that the world in our dreams has similarities with this 'real' world we're living in and this world we created exists FOR OURSELVES.
thus we're the gods of our utterly irreal world which however belongs to our own reality because it was build in ourselves.
we can think about, we can feel what we see, although it might only exist in our minds, our hearts or our souls.

what about real life?
in real life own impressions, individual arrangements and individual conceptions of the world are very important for each of us.
not everybody like the colour red, or salted pork leg with sauerkraut and jacket potatoes.
and one could think of the 'guernica' by pablo picasso as the greatest work of art in history, and the other could think of it as adulterated rubbish.

is there any possibility that private worlds, or dream worlds can also be developed in your real life?
not every person shares your same view of the world, the same opinion to dark chocolate or to your favourite artists and books, thus YOUR view of the world is wholly yours.
your opinions belong solely to you, not to anybody else - thus it is your world, your mindscape you created for yourself.
now, can the things we see be truly real?
the private world that we've formed or imagined, is NOT real, and not transferable, for the fact that the respective world belongs to the respective indiviual which has imagined it.
thus we could think of life as a grand, gigantic dream from which everybody, in his day, will awake.

this small life is as short as a sleep. it lasts for a few hours, until we embed ourselves in eternity.
to say that you truly know somebody, you should not ask, how he or she views this life, but HIS or HER world.
in his or her very world all links are connected.
humankind in nature.
humankind in civilization.

... in general, how could we know of what this very world is made of, if we only hold just a single piece of its puzzle in our hands?
you cannot expect that you will be understood, but you can add to being understood.
since every human being calls a bundle of subjective treasure troves of experience his own, who could say what's the one and only appropriate cosmovision?
we'll get a clearer understanding while talking to others.
thus we should communicate with each other and, through discourses, try to penetrate into the secret of the world.
the human being is a subjective creature, due to the fact that his self is subject of his life.
thus everybody doesn't think of the world as normal, but of his image of the world. his opinion is subjective.
his personal world is normal for himself.
or sad, because he rather wants to have a different image, which he cannot have, or which he cannot archieve, because he doesn't have the ability to change his image into something which conforms to his wishes.
now you could also think of the human 'virtue' of comfort, which shifts people all too easily (and all too often) into a condition of stiffness.
the lesson is clear: everybody sees the world, but everybody sees it in a different way.

but this is not particularly helpful if we want to know 'WHY?'.
everybody sees his OWN world ... but what constitutes his world?
... are there more specific questions we could ask?
how do you see the sky? --> you could answer quite originally: it is blue, grey, black ...
or you could answer in details, with your favourite colours ... rose clouds, veiled perse ... it gleams in pastel colours ...
but you could ask just as well:
what does blue look like? --> and then people would say: just like the colour of the sky.
or you could list the different shades of the sky: light blue, ultramarine blue, or grey, or orange, or grey-orange ...
blue has its different shades, just as human beings have their images.
the perception of human beings differs due to their existing or non-existing knowledge of art history.
if you know the colour circle and the specialist terms of chromatics, you will have a different view of the sky.

and the sun won't always shine.
and then? what if only the sun of your soul doesn't shine? do you recognize the real light of day anyways? do you take it for real in the way it is?
brightness, gladness, happiness?
now depression also simply emerges through altered metabolic brain-processes.
a depressive mood thus would mean another transformation of your image of the world.
certainly you could also say that blue is the colour of the sea. blue wears the colour of the sea. but the sea only reflects the colour of the sky, since ... water is colourless.
it is transcendental.
it changes its colour and shape.

so it could also be one of the pieces of the puzzle in the real image of the world.

water and world are the very same chameleon. they change. they transform according to the situation.
now are these mechanisms controlled by the animal that performs these actions? are they factual?
are they manipulated by an authority above oneself?
have you ever seen a chameleon that changes its colour?
it would be interesting to observe this process while taking account of the foregone issues.
and how does the human being look like it the state of transformation, in which his view of the world will change? - no matter why it changes, spontaneously or because of extrinsic forces.
now let's get back to the chameleon again.
could those animals do that at command - transform themselves and change their colour ... ?
then we could purchase one and keep it as a pet. and we could train it:
if we say 'blue' it will turn blue.
a private rainbow!
or a nice party-gag to impress your guests?
a private household slave, which then would have no free and self consciousness anymore ... ?
and this would be even better: a talking parrot that gives orders to the chameleon. who would have the better life?
what or who has an effect on the worldview of human beings:
vanity, politics, church, obsessions ... ?
what's possible?
sure enough, are we free?
or are we just like a chameleon, that is to be tamed by an upper, parrot-like authority?
everything can change.
everything is mind. everything could be everything, and still nothing at all.
everything is possible ... really?
what about the parrot?
sure enough, is he free?
how does he feel, as the lord of an inferior race? would he develop self-centered strains since he would know that he is the sovereign of a people that he can control just at his leisure?
maybe he thinks he's something special. he thinks he's a special individual being.
after all he is superior to a powerful reptile (at least if we screen it physically).
in any case human beings develop a propensity to madness once they receive a certain amount of power.
but what happens in times of need? 
what happens if we have no power?
what happens to the people who live in constraint, in captivity?
what does life feel like in diaspora ... ?
can we still unfold, spreading our wings and fly? or do we slowly dry out in the hopelessness of our situation ... in our unwanted exile?

could the subordinate person even develop a negative form of egocentrism?
are yet both of them egocentric animals, parrot as well as chameleon?
then the only distinction between those two would solely exist in the fact that one of them would want to maintain his situation while the other one would do anything to escape.
one should try to escape secretly.

it is night ... the cage opens up, the chameleon eludes the captivity of the ruling sovereign. he pinched the key from him during the daily body search ... it is cold and he hopes the floorboards won't whine ... gently the chameleon waddles into the library ... to read berkeley.

due to his doctrines of the unfree mind he recognizes his own, peculiar situation. he starts to read sartre to recognize how existential freedom is and needs to be for each and every ... 
due to a lack of sleep he starts to spaz out. it developes craves for revenge ... he wants to wreak revenge for the unfreedom which was once laid upon him. but then he reflects ... he educates himself further and thinks of different strategies how to achieve his freedom eventually.
he might prepare a posting of his proposition which he could eventually tack to his cage. '95 propositions about the primeness of freedom for chameleons'.
last but not least he developed his own view of the world and can prevail against the powerful authority.
and then he concludes:
everything is incorporeal ... everything is mind ... everything is possible.
i, too, am incorporeal. but i am - still.
i'm existing.
i'm existing as a free individual.
for MYSELF.

doesn't everybody do this in his own dreams?
fulfil himself just the way he wants to?
breaking out - of the current run of things ... ? prevailing himself against the authorities?
'being' just for himself?
revealing hidden secrets?
experiencing himself in new ways?
signifying himself?
shouldn't anyone do this in his true life as well?
due to a lack of freedom the chameleon will also have to prove in the the public sphere how he can clear a way for himself against sovereignties of all kinds, since now he is his own sovereign. through intercommunication with others his value as a subject will modify and multiply - his view of the world will rematch to his original condition.
he thinks, therefore he IS.
and due to the fact that he now is his own sovereign, he might also train his own animal. but this animal would solely live in his mind. his mind, his intellect ... from now on all of this can be reutilised. and transformised for to his own use.
yes, thereby he shows that, in the perception of your mind, you can personalize everything (given the fact that you possess enough knowledge about it). just as you like it.
because all is mind. and all is and will be mind.

and this is ultimately the realisation for the long-term borne but placidly remained revenge for the captivity in-cage.