There are places where all things converge. The many winding paths in the back of your mind will take you there, you know the ones. Those paths that lead from one dream to the next, the ones that lead directly from the cobbled streets of Edinburgh Old City to the Mid-Levels escalator in Hong Kong, and from the misty trails of the Lantau hills to the somewhat longer trails of the Annapurna mountain range by way of the shadowy forests, not of any specific place or time but themselves home to the creepy graveyards that hold so much promise but never seem to be a stopping point on the dream journey.

He’s forgotten to dream, you know. I send him reminders from time to time. I send him to the coastal paradise that is neither San Diego nor Singapore, yet could easily blend into either. The forest paths are just a step away, but he never takes them, despite my constant nudging. The train from Sham Shui Po to the South Pole? Forgotten, but that was a good one. Amazing how warm it was in the South Pole. And the North Pole? Wasn’t there a city there too? I believe he was even swimming. He wants to travel, yet he never travels the dream paths anymore. Now he just plays out his dream, if we’re lucky, but that’s as far as he gets, and he wakes up again, a mere hazy memory of the event the only evidence any of it even happened. He never immerses himself anymore, never lives between the worlds, wandering between them, watching one world transform into the next without a single thought, living in a universe where anything can be All Things.

That’s why I’m here. I keep calling, reminding him, nudging him. I’ll have to scream louder, I suppose. Until he wanders those roads again. Maybe then he’ll finally finish one of those novels of his.