Michał Karzyński

A dream about dying

I had a strange dream…

I dreamt that I imbibed a large droplet of some mysterious clear liquid. As I drank, it became aparent, that this potion confers an understanding of living and dying. It causes a hallucination, which is of the same kind as the hallucinations of dying minds. Depending on the state of your soul, when you die, your hallucination will be a pleasant one or a nightmare. This is what haven and hell are. As you are dying the last experience you will perceive will be this dream. It will stretch the finality of your time and thus become infinite.

As I understood this, I was suddenly also aware of Life. I was suddenly placed on a chessboard stretching infinitely in every direction. I was a black Knight piece. I was able to move in any direction I chose, but only in jumps taking me to the opposite end or a two by three squares rectangle. I was free to pursue any direction, yet confined only to this permitted motion. I was free to pursue any direction, yet in the infinity of possibilities, there seemed to be no sense of destination, no clearly visible goals or landmarks anywhere. The chessboard was infinite and seemingly uniform, whichever way I would look. It was made different only by the presence of other chess pieces standing here and there. It was my move.

In the split second that it took for me to realize all this, I was lifted from the surface and raised high above the chessboard. From here I could see that the chessboard really was infinite and uniformly consistent. No features, other then the endless stretch of equal squares, some occupied, others empty. There really was no “where” to go, it really did make no greater sense, there was no one “right” path to follow.

When I realized this, I begun to fly over the chessboard. The chessboard became a landscape, which combined every place I had ever visited. All these places were merged into one by the astounding speed of my flight. I begun to sing. With a clear, powerful voice I sang in a language I could not understand. I don’t know what it was I was singing, but I knew I have to sing it as loudly as I can and to be heard by as many as possible. No-one heard me, but this just made me even more courageous and determined to sing as loudly as I could. I wish I knew what it was I had sung.

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