So I dreamt that I was inside a large barn where a collectors’ fair was setting up. I waited alongside a man in his 50s with whom I became aloofly companionable. When a much-used old landau type of carriage was pushed into position near us, I explained to my companion—who seemed fresh to collectors’ fairs—about the range of things you might find on offer. There would be no grand bargains because people today are wised up, but you can still find nice middle-level stuff. I told my companion (accurately) about Japanese pottery made near Nagoya during the 1930s, which few people value highly, but which I happen to know about.
So far I have written “I”. However, during one’s explanation it dawned upon oneself that one lacked any sense of a personal identity—in common with everyone else in this alternative reality where one found oneself.
During these instants of realisation I was pre–awakening, thus an “identity” was re-integrating. I understood how a self-less society is possible whose members communicate smoothly and learn and reason and think and interact and advance technologically and culturally. Non-self-aware beings can produce a whole civilisation which may function more adaptively than our own society of individuals. Nothing in this dream was surreal in the way that almost all dreams soon become. The whole dream was realistic and naturalistic. This was a slice of life, just not our life.
