Suddenly, for no discernible reason, he realized that this was a dream. It wasn’t because of a dawning awareness that the only way to make sense of what was happening was to understand that he was dreaming, as had happened to him on numerous other occasions. On the contrary, he found himself thinking that despite the fact that he knew without any doubt that this was a dream, it all seemed as real, as vivid, as indubitably concrete as anything he had ever experienced. It happened just at a moment when he noticed how beautiful the sunlight was, shining on the wet pavement. Thinking about it later, he recalled the line from Keats’ poem, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,–that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” He had been suddenly struck by the beauty of what he saw and as suddenly certain of the truth that he was dreaming.
The dream continued a while longer. When he realized he was no longer dreaming, but just thinking about what he had dreamt, he got up, took his notebook and pen and jotted down his memories of the details of the dream:
Applying for a job. Insurance office.
“You’re hired. Hours: 8-5 and 5-10.”
“Get a haircut.”
“That’s a dealbreaker. I’m not getting a haircut.”
Car wouldn’t start, then started, engine racing, could only drive in reverse. Up a hill, finally got it to stop. Later, a man helped, found the problem: electronics, a round piece with strips out of kilter. Loose screws inside, turned out to be just extra screws.
At the workplace again, my job was dealing with electrical things. Caused a problem, fixed it. Saw a place for lunch nearby. Charming, Italian decor. But no lunch break.
Leaving, trying to find car. Flash flood coming down the street. Turned around, went in other direction. Saw two dead, very big cockroaches. Up the sidewalk, sun shining through onto the street. Beautiful. Realized it was a dream, but noticed how unbelievable and vivid and detailed everything was. Turned left, up a hill, dead skunk lying on the ground to my right. Hillside on the left. Beautiful building with a sign: “Clarenton House.” University campus. Slippery hillside, steps up ahead, women students walking up them. Sunshine slanting past trees, across the yard, mellow early autumn afternoon.
He went back to bed and back to sleep. Later that morning, now fully awake, he wrote the following notes:
There is no inside without an outside no outside without an inside, no soul without a body, no body without a soul. But can there be good without evil or evil without good, beauty without ugliness or ugliness without beauty?
Is truth independent of beauty? Is falsity independent of ugliness?
Is it possible to tell the truth in such a way as deliberately to hurt someone? I know it seems possible, but is it really? Will that really be the truth? Does the intention to hurt falsify in some way what is said?
In what way can fiction be true? Can we distinguish between fiction and nonfiction in a painting? We can admire the skill with which an artist has realistically portrayed a person or a scene, but there are always other features of the work of art by which we judge its artistic success: choice of subject if nothing else. In literature, the flow of the words, in painting, the contrasts between light and darkness, the use of colors One of the things most enjoyable in good narrative fiction is the way it enhances one’s experience of everyday life by calling attention to the details of it by the writer’s using details of sensory description to create the verisimilitude of the narration. This same effect can occur with nonfictional narrative also, but there the appeal seems to be more the knowledge or belief that the narrated events actually occurred in this same world in which one is living one’s everyday life.