i.
“You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
It is therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.”
Edgar Allan Poe
ll this will happen more or less’ -
The voice boomed
from somewhere, deep within, at once as loud as any imagined god and as
subtle as the whispers of a shell picked up from a beach and placed to
the ear. Its whisperings were the cries of greatness; in its tumult, a
quiet compassion.
The Doctor knew
that he was dreaming, yet to be truly lucid in dreams also entails some
measure of control—but he felt blurred, unsure, and at the mercy of his
unconscious. He had so often tried to exert some influence on the
panoramas he found himself in, but he was always failing—and will always
fail.
‘This is the nature of things’ - said the still, loud voice, ‘No Pandora’s Box escape from failure...Yet’ -
There was a
pause, and then came the images, as he knew they must. An old black and
white film – a cartoon of a child trying to kick an American football,
and always failing - a trench in war-time - a Tarot card, unturned - a
necklace of teeth - Tegan, crying - a railway station - a grave - a
cliff-top - a snowman - a curled snake.
Then it went dark, and nothing happened, no one moved, nobody spoke.
And he awoke,
almost feeling that the final darkness was an over-sight, like sitting
right through to the end of a film and still the houselights hadn’t come
up - and then they did, with an apology from the manager through the
speakers, tiny and faint in the final relief.
Relief. Yes,
amongst the jumbled post-dream emotions and recollections, there was
some form of relief - and a fear, the oldest fear.
ll that he had already seen was happening, the little threads already knitting together into a final sadness.
