…waking man per se
is only clear about his being awake
through the rigid and orderly woof of ideas,
and it is for this very reason
that he sometimes comes to believe
that he was dreaming
when the woof of his ideas has for a moment
been torn by Art.

Pascal is quite right,
when he asserts, that if a dream came to us every night
we should be just as occupied by it
as by the things we see every day;
to quote his words:

“If an artisan were certain that he would dream every night
for fully twelve hours that he was a king,
I believe that he would be just as happy
as a king who dreams every night for twelve hours
that he is an artisan.”

On Truth And Falsity In Their Extra-Moral Sense by Friedrich Nietzsche, Trans. by Oscar Levy

Two nights ago I dreamed of my sister.  My sister has been deceased for 6 years.  We did not have a close relationship in our growing-up years. When I think of her I feel regret. Circumstances dictate the course of every child’s life. I wish that I had known her better. My dream seemed as real as any waking experience. In the dream it seemed as if I was walking alongside my sister. Then I awakened, certain I had disturbed my wife sleeping on the other side of the bed.

That dream was as real to me as is my sense of this Starbucks space. Nietzsche suggests that the difference between a dream and our waking life is that we bring a set of ideas which organize waking experience. Just that is the difference. My “reality” is nothing else than the product of ideas which structure experience. I suspect that most of my ideas are shared, common to everyone else present in this room. Expectations, cause and effect sequences, are elaborate constructions of thought.

In a dream all manner of activities, and manifestations are possible. I can fly in a dream.

Is there any “escape hatch” from the routinization of my reality? Nietzsche suggests that there is. Art can interrupt the guard rails of ordinary experience. Art can cleave the familiar weave of life.

That familiar weave, I mean to say the palpable polarization in political discourse between Americans living in “red” and “blue” states.  Also an idea that I have spoken about before, that of American exceptionalism.  America: a city-set-on-a-hill, the exemplar of governance and culture for everyone else. And that our democracy, our Constitution, the separation of powers idea, is strong enough to outlast, to prevail over autocratic movements, and leaders. These big ideas, seldom questioned, sacrosanct, rigid are left alone, untouched, undeveloped.

When I am awake, instinct tells me that I, as well as everyone that I know are drowning. We are drowning without knowing it. The spirit gasps for breath. Is there a way to catch our breath?  Is something else possible?

Art!  More Art!

We need to fly.

These Dreams by Heart are to the point.