Paper Pattern For A Dream

Dreams -- not the kind we forget because they hit us when we are literally asleep, but the thoughts we stray to when we are bored with where we are at the moment -- seem never to happen the way we imagine they should.

Any fantasy or aspiration that seems even to be within our grasp is surely doomed to appear limbless, with an ironic twist, shaken and sometimes stirred for good measure.

Conditioning from fables about releasing genies from bottles (or obsessing over that proverbial Pandora's Box) manage our expectations. So we grow up thinking that dreams, in fact, are not supposed to appear with the regular accuracy of our pizza orders.

There is always a lack of some vital detail, a kind of missing metaphorical salami, which albeit obvious in hindsight, never occurs to present itself before we pour our hearts into wishing, hoping and praying.

It is as though the universe does not so much conspire to help dreamers, but delights in giving them exactly what they want, with no polite disclaimer to explain this cruel and politically incorrect heckling.

No surprise we emit a pained wincing that passes for laughter when we finally face the half-baked fruition of our hearts' desires.

Take the romantic in search of eternal love who finally finds her dream guy, only to discover he has halitosis, which makes her go weak in the knees for all the wrong reasons. Or that dream job the ambitious corporate climber gets while he is so very young, but then, too soon, so his enjoyment of that achievement is not so great as the runner-up turk who gets there only after years of trying. Or that anorexic who finally stops starving because she decides she wants to be healthy and happy, and that, who knew it, but there is such a thing as being too thin after all, only to have her heart fail because her body refuses to comply with her epiphany.

But back to the issue of why we can't make paper patterns from our dreams.

Why have a cake, is my point, if you can't bloody eat it?

Can satiation really lie in merely the having? Or maybe we would not prefer cake that we can't eat, and would be happy enough just with just, say, a pretzel for a substitute. Or maybe any confection will do, because any part of a dream is better than not dreaming, so any vague impression of sweetness is better having no taste of it at all.

Or maybe we just don't know cake when we see it ...