“When you fall asleep, can I take a picture?”

“A picture?” I said.

He nodded.

“But what makes you sure I’ll fall asleep?”

“Well you see,” he started, “in this city, you can always count on finding someone asleep at odd hours of the day.”

“You think?”

“I know. No one sleeps at night anymore. It’s like a communal rejection of the nocturnal. Like anarchy against the post meridian.”

I looked around. A small group of impatient passengers formed behind a large woman shuffling her way to her seat. A young man sat with a gloomy-faced two year old.

“Well maybe there’s nothing odd about this hour, “ I said.

He shrugged and reached into his briefcase.

He handed me a photo album. The pages were numbered Dream one, Dream two, and so on. Dream one was a tiny girl asleep on a swing.

I flipped through pages as signposts and buildings flew past us.

“They’re all asleep,” I said, “everyone in these photos is asleep.”

“That’s the idea,” he said, “I like to think we fall asleep so we can build dreams. Every day I carry my camera around, in search of dreams.”

The young man and the little girl alighted in front of a school. She still looked upset. He squatted and then slowly lifted his index finger to his face. A soft smile built across her face as she did the same. They touched index fingers. She hugged him, and ran through the gate.

“You think we can be like that?” he asked.

I shrugged.

“Probably not.”

“You know,” he said, “I read a story once about a far off land where people let total strangers fall asleep on their shoulders. Like say, while riding the train. The writer claims it’s the best way to catch a good night’s sleep.”

“But that’s impossible,” I said, “I mean, it had to be fiction, right?”

He stared into space for a while, like he was watching breaths collide.

“You think it has something to do with trains?”

We let the thought drift in air for a while.

He shook his head.

“You know what? The writer probably made it up. There’s no other way,” he said.

I nodded.

“Sorry I didn’t fall asleep.”

“No worries, maybe next time.”

* * *

Imagine a void. A vast sea of emptiness and formless darkness. Like a disease. It sits there breathing, brooding, growing. It is ruthless in its desire to survive, to live. A void that breathes and grows and lives in all of us. A shapeless darkness that gives us form. Part parasite, part host.

All of our affairs are a collision of voids. A collision from which we hope to chip away the rough edges and produce fine geometries. Beautiful emptiness. From falling in love or asleep on a shoulder, to catching dreams drift between stops. Attempts at giving form to a shapeless void. Sometimes we succeed, sometimes we don’t.

* * *

“When I fall asleep, can I use your shoulder?”

“My shoulder?” I asked.

She nodded and smiled.

“But what makes you sure you’ll fall asleep?”

She said nothing. We rode in silence.

The city rushed past us, like the world was in a hurry to cure itself before our arrival.

When the bus stopped, she woke up and adjusted her hair. Sunlight hit her dress and made her body seem to move like a pack of trembling puppies.

When she moved, her footsteps were paradoxical. She moved like she wasn’t moving.

Her feet carried faint sounds of musical notes; Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti Do. She stopped. Do Ti La Sol Fa Mi Re Do. She leaned forward with a wave.

“Thank you!” she said.

I watched her disappear along the pathways between an ice-cream shop and a goldsmith’s. She ebbed away like a slow, gentle breeze; but I could still feel the weight of her head on my shoulder. She was at once here, and there.

* * *

The next day I took the bus again.

We rode in silence. Her warm breath in slumber carried echoes of distant dreams. When she let out a sigh, my body shook. I became a mechanical device; the more she sighed, the more I shook.

When the bus stopped, she woke up, said thank you, and left.

I showed up the next day, and the day after that, and the next.

We’d forged an alliance; we knew our duties. Our heartbeats touched. Those silent moments nibbled at the roughs of our shared void, until slowly it felt like we had form; like we had symmetry.

Some days though, I’d miss her. I was either too early or late. I’d feel upset, jealous. I’d wonder on whose shoulders she’d fallen asleep. Lucky bastard.

* * *

I recognised the man on TV. The photographer. He’d become a bit famous. He called his photos a collage of dreams. Questions and comments poured from everywhere. He appeared to be enjoying himself.

Someone called in. Asked why the people in his photos appeared small, almost insignificant. If he claimed to be interested in their dreams, why make them look so small compared to their surroundings?

He smiled. He was definitely enjoying himself.

He didn’t care much for the dreamer, he said, but for the “dream space.” The space where dreams hovered about the dreamer in a gentle dance. He believed by capturing this, he was capturing dreams.

* * *

One day I showed up at the bus stop. She wasn’t there. And then the day after and the next. I showed up one more time, then one extra time. The longer she was away, the more I hoped she’d show up.

One day I had a bright idea. I packed a pillow and blanket. Took a nice spot between kiosks. I watched busses speed off away from sight. I saw the irony; I too was in a hurry to cure myself.

The next morning, I went home.

* * *

A package came in. A photo of dreams frozen in time. We’d both fallen asleep. Our dreams came together in a gentle dance. Our dreams touched.

There was a note, it said; “…I guess it’s not the trains after all.”

I was a bit confused to see it numbered Dream one; he’d started a new album for a new kind of dream.

He chose a question for a title, “what is the shape of your dreams?”

I carried the photo everywhere, it was a worm hole to a new dimension. A world where forgotten dreams lived on. Dreams dreamt up on shoulders and highways.

One day I got another package. A note. It said, “I’m sorry, we can’t be strangers anymore.”

On one hand I held the photo, and on the other, her note. I looked at one, then at the other. I couldn’t help myself; I stood between contradictions. Then slowly, I cracked up a smile, then a chuckle, until finally I began to laugh. I laughed and laughed and laughed.

* * *

Here's a beautiful piece of music:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw9fKuymA0I&t=209s

I originally published this on:https://medium.com/literally-literary/dreams-love-and-happiness-b5c681599901