The Dream Fisher | Surrealist Sleep Story

In tonight’s surrealist bedtime story, you enter the mysterious domain of an ancient being known as the Dream Fisher – this is the place from which inspiration comes, and where ideas return when they go unrealized. Armed with a crude map, you seek the Fisher, in hopes they will return a dream you lost track of. But this proves a task more surreal and wondrous than you imagined, as the Dream Fisher takes you under his wing, conferring his wisdom to you.

Music & Sound: A Glimpse of Avalon by Flouw, Gentle Winds by Ethan Sloan, Via Epidemic Sound

Transcript

Visit the realm of unconscious inspiration in tonight's surrealist bedtime story.

Sleep and Sorcery is a folklore and fantasy-inspired sleep series.

My name is Laurel,

And I'll be your guide on tonight's fantastical journey.

Sleep and Sorcery is one part bedtime story,

One part guided meditation,

And one part dreamy adventure.

Follow along with my voice for as long as it serves you,

And whenever you're ready,

Feel free to let go of the story and relax into sleep.

There is no separate meditation at the end of this story,

But there are meditation cues at the beginning and throughout.

These you can follow if you like,

Or simply let the words wash over you on your way to sleep.

In tonight's story,

You enter the mysterious domain of an ancient being known as the Dream Fisher.

This is the place from which inspiration comes,

And where ideas return when they go unrealized.

Armed with a crude map,

You seek the Fisher,

In hopes they will return a dream you lost track of.

But this proves a task more surreal and wondrous than you imagined,

As the Dream Fisher takes you under his wing,

Conferring his wisdom to you.

Ideas come to us,

We don't really create an idea,

We just catch them,

Like fish.

David Lynch Before we begin the story,

I invite you to take three deep,

Cleansing breaths with me,

Settling into the soft awareness of your body in space.

And as we prepare to breathe together,

Take a moment,

If it feels right,

To identify an intention.

This intention should be something you want to realize in your life,

Spoken as if it is already true.

A short,

Simple phrase,

In the present tense,

A mantra,

That you'd like to plant like a seed in your dreams tonight.

When you've identified your intention,

We'll seal it with your breath.

Breathe in,

Silently meditating on your intention,

And breathe out,

Completely letting the body soften.

Breathe in,

Repeating your intention silently,

And breathe out.

One more deep breath,

Repeating your intention one more time in your mind.

Breathe naturally now,

Letting your intention,

Your mantra,

Take root,

Knowing you can return and tend to it,

Anytime it needs nurturing.

To reach the kingdom of the dreamfisher,

There is no road,

No train or aircraft,

No ship or channel.

The journey there is unique to the visitor,

And most who seek that place never find it,

Losing themselves,

Rather,

In the halls of extravagant palaces,

Or in the pulsing glow of a strange wood.

There are countless distractions and delights along the way,

Meant to redirect even the most determined seeker.

Have you ever had a dream in which you felt a closeness to something,

A profound truth,

An invigorating idea,

Or an unfiltered joy,

And then awoken before you could quite grasp the ecstasy?

Have you tried in vain to return to the dream,

To pick up where you left off,

Only to find yourself muddled in a slightly altered version of your everyday life?

If you have,

You might have been seeking the kingdom of the dreamfisher,

Even if you didn't know it.

That,

After all,

Is the home of those intangible forms,

Those diamonds of inspiration.

We're not meant to reach in and scoop them out of the unconscious with ease.

If we were,

They wouldn't be transcendent.

The ones who successfully reach the dreamfisher's kingdom most often do so by traveling the current of breath,

By sinking down the spiral of deep relaxation,

Anchored only by mantra or intention.

Like a life vest,

The mantra keeps the seeker afloat on the tides of the unconscious,

Which are saturated with many things—memory,

Prophecy,

Possibility,

Impossibility.

It takes courage to ride this maelstrom—courage but not concentration.

If you concentrate too finely on the objective,

Or cling too tightly to the mantra,

You're likely to spin off in another direction entirely.

Instead,

The journey requires surrender,

A willingness to flow with the current,

The breath,

The mantra,

And a readiness to,

When the moment is right,

Let go of the anchor.

Slowly,

Softly,

You are riding this current now.

Your breath is the boat,

And also the water.

Down,

Down,

Down you flow,

Relaxing into a state of ease,

Lightness,

And effortless surrender.

Your soul knows the way,

Intuitively,

Even as the body and the mind may drift.

You soften and flow,

Downward still,

At ease,

Spiraling toward mystery,

Until,

With almost no sound at all,

Only the faintest whisper of disturbance,

Your feet fall,

And you are standing atop a great and grassy hill.

Landing here in your dream body,

You blink your dream eyes to clarify your vision.

This high place affords you a panoramic vista of the land that stretches out below,

And while mist may shroud some of the realm,

There is much here to delight the eye.

Your gaze reaches first to the tempting spirals in the distant east.

You believe it is east,

For there a glimmering sun is poised to rise.

There is a formal helix at the furthest reach of your sight,

A labyrinth of hedges and stone,

But nearer there are informal spirals.

Maze-like channels,

A landscape reminiscent of gothic tracery.

Swamps,

Or marshes,

You think,

With narrow veins of dry land,

Asking to be explored.

There are wild,

Tangled woods before you,

Extending well beyond the horizon,

But broken up by groves,

Glades,

And open spaces,

And where the tree line is thin,

There is the glimmer of water,

A lake,

And all down the hill and also at the base are gardens,

Some gated,

Others sprawling and open.

The air is redolent of roses and meadow sage,

And on the tendrils of fragrance come the traces of familiarity.

You follow the curves and curiosities of the landscape with your eyes,

Traveling the perimeters of your gaze,

And moving inward with each circle,

Reading the land like a map,

Or a mandala.

You're quite certain the thing you seek is here,

Though you can't express exactly what your quarry is.

You only know that you came close to something,

Nearly grasped an idea or an image so sublime,

But so fleeting it slipped through your fingers.

A dream.

You've come to this place,

This hidden landscape of hills and spirals,

To reclaim it.

Once you have it,

You're not even sure what you'll do with it,

But the longing runs deep.

Will that dream become poetry,

Song,

Artwork of a grand or micro-scale,

Or is it more like a way of living,

A lens,

A frame,

A means of connecting and forging community?

Whatever it is,

Abstract as it may be,

You know it's here.

There's a tingling in your fingers,

A prickling feeling throughout your dream body that senses its nearness,

But how to find it?

At the very thought,

Your hand closes around something,

Something that seems to have materialized out of thin air.

You bring forth a roll of parchment,

Tied with a green ribbon.

This you loosen,

Then unroll the paper to reveal a map.

Hand-drawn,

But wonderfully intricate,

With black ink marking the trails and the topography of the hidden realm in which you find yourself.

The markings reveal secrets your naked eye can't see,

A network of tunnels underground,

Like the chutes of a rabbit warren,

All throughout this strange kingdom,

All leading to a great burrow beneath this very hill.

Does the dream you seek reside in that subterranean refuge?

Your eyes wander the map,

Pulled toward its center,

To the illustrated lake.

You smile to see the etchings of tiny images along the water,

A tail fin sticking out from the surface,

As of a whale or a mermaid,

Otters on the shore,

Birds perched nearby,

And on the edge,

The rough outline of a structure,

A house.

You glance from the lake on the map to its counterpart below you.

You can't make it out entirely,

But through the towering conifers,

There might be a hint of smooth white,

The facade of a house perhaps,

The prickling feeling swells.

What you're looking for must be there,

Or at least,

That's where you'll find a clue.

Map in hand,

You begin the journey down the slope.

Along the way,

You pass the ivy-wrapped iron gates,

Ever so slightly ajar,

To a flower garden,

Enclosed by hedges.

You approach the gate to look inside,

Your heart fluttering to see the bursting peonies,

The rose bushes of flower in every imaginable hue,

The business of butterflies and bees.

You can,

You realize,

See the fragrance,

Visible swirls of floral essence wafting from the blooms toward you.

You imagine you could,

If you wanted,

Grab hold of one of those aromatic threads and be carried away,

Into the heart of the flower,

Or off to distant lands.

It's a tempting notion,

But dreams live here,

And marvelous as the detour may be,

It would only serve to distract from your goal.

Savoring the scent for just a moment longer,

You close the gate with a creek and continue down the hill.

This place is full of possible pathways,

You realize,

Fighting the urge to investigate an oak tree with a hollow large enough to climb inside,

A door,

Perhaps,

To other worlds.

When you feel the tug of doorways,

Detours,

You find your mind wandering back to a mantra,

And your feet back to your chosen path.

As your vantage point from the crest of the hill slowly levels off,

You turn to the map once more,

And seek the water and the mysterious structure.

Its markings have shifted,

Adjusting to your point of view,

But this doesn't strike you as odd.

It's just the kind of thing that might happen in a dream.

It isn't long before you reach the water's edge,

A lake as still as glass,

Reflecting color and light,

But nothing else.

Even as you lean over the surface,

Your reflection does not appear,

And nor do the silhouettes of the pines that encircle the lake.

The water is somehow crystalline and entirely opaque,

With no clue to the creatures or flora that reside beneath.

You look up at a sudden rattling sound,

Spotting something small shooting up toward the sky.

It stops mid-air just above the center of the lake,

And you realize it's a bird.

Its wings beat furiously,

But it merely hovers,

As if pinned to the spot,

Its great oversized bill pointing downward toward the water.

The bird's plumage is blue and green and buffy gold,

Iridescent like a fish,

And in the blink of an eye,

With another shudder of a call,

The bird dives.

You hardly see it move before the surface of the lake splits,

A splash like shattered glass and a music like wind chimes.

The surface is spectacularly disturbed,

Sending plumes of water up and out,

Refracting the dreamy sunlight in a million delicate rainbows.

Out again comes the bird with a crash,

Gripping something in its bill,

But before you can get a good look at its catch,

It retreats into the trees.

There in the direction to which the bird disappears is the house you've been seeking.

Somehow you didn't see it until now,

But there it is,

Just at the edge of the water,

Looming over it.

As the surface of the lake settles and returns to its eerie,

Impossible stillness,

You make your way around the perimeter,

Toward the house.

It's the most unusual house you believe you've ever seen,

Constructed of pure white birch or something like it,

But the wood is smooth,

Unbroken,

As if it's been carved from a single unblemished and monumental tree.

This has the effect of making it appear sculpted of porcelain.

The house is elevated on two thick,

Decorative columns,

Which resemble the legs of a bird,

Carved to talons at the base.

Like owl's feet,

You think,

And the whole structure with its cylindrical shape,

Its wide,

Circular windows,

And its asymmetric gables,

Has the impression of a great snow-white owl huddled amid the evergreens.

A narrow stairway leads up to the front door,

And a balcony wraps around all you can see of the house.

And here,

On the balcony,

Though you hadn't noticed before,

There is someone standing,

Looking out over the lake.

There is the bird,

Too,

With flashing blue feathers,

Hovering over the resident of the curious house.

He holds up his arms toward the bird,

Who loosens its grip on the thing in its bill,

Dropping it into the outstretched hands below.

Then,

In a blink,

The bird is gone,

Off into the trees.

A stranger turns away and goes to the door of his owl house.

You think for a second that he has seen you standing there below,

But he does not flinch or acknowledge you.

He simply goes inside,

But he leaves the front door open.

From where you stand,

You can see just a hint of what's inside,

And it rouses your curiosity.

There's a flickering light,

Almost like from a roaring fireplace,

But it can't be that.

The light is cooler,

More uniform than a flame.

It's something else.

Then comes a voice.

It's soft,

But clearly audible.

It's welcoming and kind,

With a hint of mystery.

Well,

Says the voice from inside the house,

Are you coming in or not?

Your heart leaps at the invitation.

Until this moment,

You hadn't realized how badly you longed to see the inside of the house,

To converse with the stranger.

Now that desire unlocks,

And your dream body lunges for the steps,

Scrambling toward the door of the unusual white cottage.

You can leave the door open,

He says,

As you step over the threshold.

I like to hear the birds.

You pause in the doorway as you take in the interior.

The entry floor is perfectly round,

Just like the outside of the house.

There is a tight spiral staircase across the room,

Leading to an unseen second level.

It's lit only by the natural light from those two perfectly round windows,

And your eyes adjust to the dimness.

Beneath your feet,

The floor is intricately grooved,

As if carved to resemble wood grain,

Or illustrative wind,

Or waves.

It has a sense of movement,

But it feels stable and grounding at the same time.

And the walls are covered floor to ceiling with paintings,

Photographs,

Some framed and others merely pinned there.

There are shelves,

Too,

Naturally curved to fit the walls that bear an unthinkable weight of books.

Vases of dried flowers,

Tiny objects,

And curios.

There are two great armchairs in the center of the room,

Between which sits a small end table.

On that table are two objects,

A crystal bud vase containing a single blue rose,

And a film projector.

Opposite the projector,

On the only bare swath of wall in the whole room,

A film is playing.

Here,

You realize,

Is the source of the flickering light.

But your eyes are drawn away from the projection on the wall,

To the occupant of one of those green,

Velvet chairs,

The man from the balcony.

Come sit,

He says,

Gesturing to the empty chair on his left.

I won't bite,

He says this with a grandfatherly chuckle,

And you instantly feel at ease in his presence.

You go to the armchair and sit,

Sinking softly into it.

You behold your otherworldly host,

Seated beside you.

He is wizened and slender,

White-haired and hermit-like,

But with a gravitas outmatched to his humble surroundings.

Seated in profile,

With the film flickering against his face,

He looks to you like an ancient king in exile.

There have been some really good ones today,

He says,

Eyes on the projection.

This one is a little derivative though,

Don't you think?

You look to the film playing on the wall.

It looks like nothing more than abstract shapes and lines intersecting,

Squiggles and spirals all intertwined.

What is it,

You ask,

Trying to make sense of the animate images?

I'd say it's only a half-formed dream,

He responds.

It must have risen to the surface before it was fully realized.

But look there.

He points to the projection with a light of excitement in his eyes and voice.

That's something,

Isn't it?

Just the seed of something.

You follow his pointing finger to a dancing shape in the corner.

Though it still looks like nothing but abstract nonsense to you,

There's something about the way that it moves that stirs up a potent intrigue.

It's like a fuzzy patch of reflected sunlight dancing across a surface as its source twitches.

The kind of light that can drive cats mad trying to capture it.

You watch it for some time,

Beginning to feel like it might carry some great potential indeed.

Hard as that is to understand.

You turn once more to face your host.

What is this place,

You ask?

Who.

.

.

Who are you?

He turns to you and laughs.

That warm,

Welcoming laugh again.

Of course,

He says,

I haven't introduced myself.

I suppose you don't remember the last time we met.

We've met before,

You ask,

With a degree of bewilderment.

But on a second thought,

It sounds entirely rational.

The map of this place,

After all,

Is in your own handwriting.

Even if you hadn't realized that till now.

You've been here before.

I'm sure I've changed since last we saw each other,

Says your host,

Whose etched face becomes ever more familiar.

It's all changed.

The woods have gotten wilder.

I've planted new trees.

You search your memory,

Trying to recall meeting this stranger before.

But it's just out of reach,

Like the meaning of the abstract forms projected on the wall.

What's your name,

You ask,

Hoping the answer will enlighten you.

Oh,

I've accumulated a few names over the years,

He smiles.

It seems like every time I turn around,

There's a new one.

Most of them didn't fit right.

But some of them I liked.

Morpheus was popular for a little while.

And Thoth.

These days I take whatever name that's given to me.

Wear it for a while and let it go,

Till someone comes to visit again.

He looks at you intently,

His eyes wrinkling at the corners in a hidden smile.

What would you call me,

If it were up to you?

You look into his eyes,

Which glitter in the throw of the projector.

It lights one half of his face,

Leaving the rest in shadow.

And in the changing colors of the film that play across him,

You recall the shattered prisms of the water as the bird dove beneath.

The shards of light,

The outstretched hands into which the bird dropped its prey,

And a name,

Or perhaps a title,

Rises to the surface of your mind.

Fisher,

You say.

He smiles.

Hmm,

He thinks.

Been a while since that came around.

Once I was called the Fisher King,

You know.

All of this was my domain.

I was king,

And therefore responsible for the land and all who inhabit it.

But to rule was never quite my calling.

I wanted to build labyrinths with my hands,

To plant trees and flowers in the dirt,

To fish.

So I sat on the lake in a boat from morning to night,

With my line in the water,

Reeling in whatever would bite,

Until the crown tumbled from my head into the lake and the woods became wild,

The trees their own masters.

I wasn't meant to be a king after all,

But a steward.

You're looking for something,

Aren't you?

That's why you've come back.

You're looking for a dream you lost hold of.

You nod.

From somewhere outside,

The rattling call of a bird joins the rustle of the film projector.

Come with me,

He says,

Standing up from the chair.

I've got something to show you.

As the film reel spins off,

Leaving an ambient flicker across the room,

You follow the fisher out the door and onto the wraparound balcony overlooking the lake.

Just as before,

The surface is eerily still.

Watch,

Says the fisher,

Pointing to a tree near the water's edge.

You spot the bright blue bird just before it leaps from its branch,

Rising into the sky.

It hovers and dives,

Splitting the surface again into infinite shards of ether and light.

And then it re-emerges,

Grasping something in its bill.

The fisher whistles and the bird comes flapping toward you.

As it hovers just overhead,

You squint to try and make out what it's got in its bill,

But the light glints so brightly off the thing you can't figure it out.

Hold out your hand,

The fisher says,

And you do.

The bird lowers an inch or two and opens its bill,

Dropping the inscrutable thing in your hands.

What you catch is indeed slippery and iridescent,

But it's not a fish.

It's a short strip of film.

You hold it up to your eye,

Allowing the sunlight to shine through the cells.

There are pictures imprinted on each frame.

A person,

A place you recognize.

You turn to the fisher in surprise,

And you see the bird perched on his fingers.

My kingfishers,

He says,

They're uniquely skilled at collecting the fragments.

So skilled they put me to shame in my little boat.

Casting a lure is a game of chance.

You can only reel in that which chooses to bite,

But these birds can navigate the dark water,

Search the unsearchable,

Find the unfindable.

So this,

You say,

Delicately holding the film strip,

Is a dream,

The fisher responds,

Or rather a fragment of one.

The lake is teeming with them,

And more appear every moment,

But the lake never overflows from the volume.

It simply deepens,

Becomes more capacious,

Holds more.

Where do they come from,

You ask,

Straining your eyes to examine the glass-like surface of the water.

Try as you might,

You still cannot see past the surface to what swims beneath.

You imagine infinite frames,

Strips,

Cells,

Entwined and tangled so tightly they form tiny helices,

Like strands of DNA.

They come from you,

He replies,

You and all those who dream.

Whether they originate within you,

Or somewhere else,

I don't know,

That's beyond my vision.

Maybe they're spun into threads by some arcane weaver,

But once they're dreamt,

They wind up here,

And my birds and I collect the ones that call to us.

We find patterns,

Themes or sparks,

Anything that sets the imagination alight.

We turn the dreams into something else.

We create with them,

As our medium,

And material.

As you converse with the fisher,

This mysterious man who fishes for dreams,

You unearth some answers,

While hatching bigger,

More unwieldy questions.

You learn that he's always been here,

In this wild kingdom,

But that it wasn't always the lush forest and landscape it is now,

Surrounded by hills.

Planted each and every tree in the wood.

And that yonder swamps are simply channels for discarded dreams,

The ones that serve only to confuse,

Rather than inspire.

Back when dreams were seeds,

He says,

Every tree was once a dream,

Dropped in the lake by a dreaming mind.

Listen.

A wind rustles the evergreen canopy,

And the pines and firs whisper and hum.

A song whistles through them,

Surreal and haunting.

The trees are singing their ancient dreams to life,

And your bones know the melody.

There was a time,

He tells you,

When dreams were stones,

Stones of every shape and size,

From pebble to boulder.

These he piled atop one another,

Building statues and stone circles,

And a labyrinth.

This lake,

Ever deepening,

Ever expanding,

Cradles the collective unconscious,

Thoughts fixated upon,

Dreams dreamt and forgotten.

You imagine a great,

Interconnected web of dreamers,

Thoughts woven together like threads in a tapestry,

With shared images and themes emerging from the chaos.

Now they come to me in this form,

He smiles,

Indicating the filmstrip in your hands,

And I must say,

I'm quite taken with the medium.

There's so much you can do with it.

Like what?

You wonder aloud.

At this,

The fisher pulls a hand to his mouth to whistle once more,

This time with a fluctuating pitch.

The bird on his shoulder rises to fly,

And several more come fluttering out of the trees.

Altogether,

In an instant,

They dive,

Breaking the surface again,

And re-emerge moments later.

Each of them holds a shining filmstrip in their bill,

And these they bring to the balcony,

Dropping them in the fisher's outstretched hands.

He pulls one from the pile of segments,

All with their irregular shapes,

And tosses it casually into the air.

Your instinct is to reach out,

To catch it before it falls to the ground,

Or right back into the water.

But to your surprise,

It doesn't fall.

Instead,

The segment unfurls,

Straightening itself against the sky,

Almost fastening itself to the spot just before your eyes.

As the sun streams through it,

You can see the images imprinted on each frame,

The tiny variations that come together to form a scene,

A dream fragment.

Then the fisher folds his bundle of film toward you,

Gesturing for you to take one.

You reach in and unspool a lengthy roll,

Examining it closer.

You can see a desert landscape etched in the cells.

With the fisher's tacit encouragement,

You hold the end of the filmstrip up to the sky and place it,

Edge to edge,

With the one that hangs there,

Glittering in the sun.

Before your eyes,

The ends of the filmstrips shine and reach for each other,

Fusing together through some unknown alchemy.

And with that simple action,

You have the start of something.

You feel,

Deep within,

The spark of possibility,

The simmering force of creation that turns the wheels of the poet,

The traveler,

The architect.

And this is just the first step.

There reignites within you a desire to reconstruct your lost dream,

The one you first ventured here to find.

And now you understand.

You look to the shining frames that hang before you and to the pile in the fisher's hands.

These,

You realize,

Are the fragments of your lost dream.

It's up to you,

With the keen eye and decisive spirit of a film director,

To put it back together.

This task you undertake with gravity.

One by one,

You examine the salvaged dream fragments,

Searching for connections in the imagery and content.

The film is riddled with the uncanny,

Almost familiar faces,

Places,

Desires.

It's hard to make logical sense of,

But you find that it makes a kind of dream sense.

One fragment flows to the next in a manner disinterested in linear time.

Yet with sparkling clarity of theme.

And any time you're at a loss for how to arrange a set of fragments,

Fusing them together one by one,

You close your eyes,

Return to the mantra on which you sailed hither and lead with your heart to place the next frame.

The fisher looks on in silence as you work,

But you can sense his pride and intrigue.

The wind stirs up the songs of the trees.

The birds chatter.

The hills hum.

And when at last you've placed the final fragment,

You step back to behold the shining product of your labor.

Affixed to the sky,

Winding across the balcony over the lake is your dream,

Reassembled.

You swell with satisfaction and with apprehension.

It's one thing to put the pieces together and another to see the whole as it's meant to be seen.

Will it spark as you remember?

Will it be worth it?

There's only one way to know.

With the fisher's assistance,

You thread the film into the projector inside the house.

Together,

You take your seats in the green velvet chairs and you take a deep breath as the projector begins its familiar shuffling sound.

Light moves through the frames,

Throwing the assembled fragments of your dream upon the wall.

Immediately,

Goosebumps flood your dream body.

The rush,

The creative spark lights anew within you.

This is what you've been seeking,

What you'll bring back to the waking world,

Ready to transform it into something tangible.

As the film plays,

This sense of excitement builds to a crescendo.

But just as you are ready to rip the dream from the projector and force yourself to wake up,

The film suddenly stops.

A cascade of empty frames.

Your breath catches and you look to the fisher who chuckles.

Your heart sinks.

That's it,

You wonder.

This was the dream that you sank to the deepest levels of the unconscious to retrieve.

A dream with so much promise that ignited the ecstatic rush of creativity before sputtering,

Ultimately uninspiring,

Bound for the swamps.

And your host,

The fisher,

Dares to laugh as if bringing you here was nothing but a joke.

I've come all this way,

You sigh,

Crestfallen.

I thought I'd find something transcendent.

Dreamers often feel that way,

Says the fisher in a consoling voice.

But the dream is the dream.

It's rarely the answer to all our questions or the key to some sublime discovery.

It's up to you to turn it into something more.

The projector ticks as the reel reaches its end.

Then it goes dark.

You wonder what to do next.

Will you simply take your leave of this place,

Of the fisher?

Climb the staircase of your breath to return to your body,

Always coveting the lost dream which never existed quite as you had hoped.

Take the lesson and retreat?

Or will you dare to go deeper,

To plumb the profound?

You wiggle your dream fingers and your dream toes,

Cultivating an awareness of your dream body embedded in this strange plane.

If dreams can become seeds here,

And singing trees,

And quivering labyrinths,

And film fragments,

Then so can you.

You are a dreamer,

But you are also a dream.

Do you know what you are when you are sleeping?

Are you a body?

Or a soul?

Or some occult and mysterious thing?

Thank you,

You say to the fisher,

Calmly removing the reel from the film projector.

You tuck it under your arm and bid farewell to the steward of the unconscious,

You step out onto the balcony overlooking the lake of dreams.

Maybe it's the way the light hits it just now,

Or maybe it's the shift in your perspective,

But it seems clearer.

You can see movement below the surface,

Even if the bottom is impossible to fathom.

You close your eyes,

Inhale deeply,

And return to your mantra.

It rejoins the beat of your dream heart,

Softly whispering that it's been with you all this time.

Your breath synchronizes with the breeze that wakes the dreaming song of the wild wood,

Summoning the spark,

The creative force within you.

You harness the breeze,

Pulling it to you,

Allowing it to remake you,

Transform you.

With the unlimited alchemy of the dreaming space,

You call feathers to form,

Transmuting arms to wings.

You pull threads of sunlight and blue sky into an iridescent cloak.

You kick off from the balcony,

Daring gravity to hold you back.

But gravity has no power here,

Not against the will of the dreamer.

You become a kingfisher,

Powerful wingbeats agitating the breeze into a symphony.

You climb higher till you have a bird's eye view of the entire valley,

The whole kingdom of the unconscious.

Its topography is a meandering melody with strains that pulse from the unexplored labyrinth,

The swamps and the swaying woods.

And just below you,

Far below,

Shines the lake,

No longer still but alive with activity and energy,

All its shimmering dream fragments twining and separating,

Coruscating.

Among them all flashing with green and silver and blue and black,

There is a tiny glint of gold.

You watch from above as the glowing gold fragment slips deeper into the water,

Down into its depths.

You yearn to capture it.

The missing fragment.

The fallen crown to reignite your inspiration.

In an instant,

You dive down,

Down into the pool of dreams you plunge,

Your feathers fluttering against film strips,

Infinite symbols and stories slipping by you.

You follow the golden light deeper and deeper.

The more you exert in pursuit of the golden light,

The faster it seems to slip below,

Until,

Binding your breath among the millions of dreams,

You touch an unseen current and allow it to carry you.

It is a current of breath.

You surrender to it,

Sinking down the spiral of deep relaxation,

Holding only to your mantra to navigate the tides of the unconscious.

It takes courage to ride this maelstrom.

Courage,

But not concentration.

Slowly,

Softly,

You ride the current.

Your breath is the boat and also the water.

You are the water and you are the dreamer and the dream,

The medium and the maker.

Down,

Down,

Down you flow,

Relaxing into a state of ease,

Lightness and effortless surrender.

Your soul knows the way.

You soften and flow downward still,

At ease,

Spiraling toward a halo of glowing gold,

Toward the spark,

The creative force,

Toward mystery.

From his balcony,

Beneath a chorus of fir trees,

The dream fisher looks on and smiles.

Sweet dreams.

Reviews

Thank you 🙏 💚

Beautiful story! I listen to one of your stories to fall asleep every night! Thank you!

I love your stories and the sound of your voice helps to send me to sleep.

Lovely voice , story was interesting enough to start but not interesting enough that I wanted to stay awake to hear the rest. Perfect balance

Love this channel.

Thanks! I was sleeping no time at all!

Blessedly I fell asleep! Loved what I heard and will definitely listen again! 💫😴🙏

Loved your story. You have a beautiful loving voice. Thank you for sharing your stories and talents with me.

Beautiful, Laurel. Such awesome visuals.
Hope you're doing well ŵ you're growing family. Missing you, from Australia 🇦🇺.
Thakfully, I'm able to listen to your other stories in my playlist, of which I have many. ☺️🥰🐈‍⬛🐆

The only thing that helps me sleep is listening to you! Wonderful.

I love your stories... And all the knowledge of folklore, mythology and literature you put into them. You also have a great reading voice. I enjoy falling asleep with this... Or staying awake at times

Lovely, creative, and relaxing.

Love all your stories. Helps me sleep.

So nice to have such a lovely new story
Thanks

Dreamy… thank you! 🙏🏼❤️