Dracula

6 Things About Everything

1. Such dreams! I remember when I was small, I had a wind-up box that played “Over the Rainbow”, and that was what I fell asleep to for 10 years. If anyone were to ask me, “What’s your theme song?” I wouldn’t have to think about it. Not pop, no Lady Gaga or Breaking Benjamin. Just the song that haunted my sleep so long the wind-up box became a wind-up person. As the first notes come my limbs get heavy and my eyelids droop. I shut them and suddenly there’s no such thing as a book of literary merit, or a grade, or failure. Perhaps that’s why we are so disenchanted, then, because we were always so enchanted to begin with. To fall into oblivion like clouds, like powdered snow, like “Over the Rainbow” and a pillow. That’s what we grow on. If we were vampires, we’d feed not on blood but on dreams.

2. Then I wake up. The pillow isn’t so soft, but it’s there, and it’s real. Not like the things I imagine, like movie clips pasted together, when I’m not thinking of real things. And it’s a true thing; that I never dream of anything I wish to dream about. But you can’t wish your subconscious into submission. That’s the reason it’s your subconscious, not your conscious. If we could control everything we imagine we’d never dream of zombies or darkness or glorious strange worlds. And then there would be no Dr. Seuss, no Final Fantasy, no World of Warcraft. No fiction, no insight, no words. As terrified as we are of things we can’t control, it’s no wonder we have such nightmares.

3. Words. Letters clumped together, hopefully in a pattern, more than often not. Sometimes the words make sentences. Sometimes the sentences make words. I Think Imagination Says Things Rarely Understood (by) Everyone. We can cheat a little. We all cheat a little. And sometimes when those sentences don’t make sense, they make the most sense. Just like when someone tells the truth, sometimes they aren’t telling the real truth. I think maybe there’s more truth in fiction than in any thick biography. Dead people have lessons to teach, but imaginary people teach the lessons we can’t learn from the dead. That’s why we put flowers on the graves, and go home and read a book. The dead teach us their mistakes, and books teach us our successes.

4. The regrets that weigh us down make us the lightest. Have you ever seen someone who’s never made a mistake? It’s quite irritating, actually. You glare a little, like you can’t help it, and they’re never your friend for that. Too perfect, you think. They’re too perfect to be real—they shouldn’t be real. They’re just characters, made-up people. But remember that the made-up people teach us something too. Most of the time, however, it turns out the perfect person is the one who just covers up their flaws a little better than the rest. You get to know them and it turns out they let their friend attempt to commit suicide. They got a B in PE. They don’t write in complete sentences, and they don’t have any lessons to teach and too many to learn. I want to meet a made-up person. I think they would be earthier than anyone who’s ever made a mistake. Treat regrets like balloons. The more you have, the less you can touch the ground. That’s guilt, I guess.

5. And truth be told (it always will), I’m heartily sick of the future and I’m especially sick of the past. I’m writing in a composition book and the teacher says, “Today we’re making plans for the future” and the entire class groans. Why? Because we hate the future. It’s even more uncertain than death. In fact it’s probably the antithesis of death because at least we know we’re going to die. We don’t know we’ll have a future. Which is why I’m sick of looking for it. If life were a corridor lined with doors, I’d spend my time looking behind every one for that inescapable yet elusive “future” of which I’m hearing so much. And the past is no better! We must learn from the past. This I know, from dead men. More so from the words of dead men, because no one cares for a corpse but everyone cares for the words of a corpse. Possibly we realize only words escape death, and only in the end when all people die will words die too. Until then they’re the constant; the past, the corpses, the words. Sometimes when I learn about history I just want to leave. I don’t want to spend my life avoiding mistakes. Yet at the same time it’s the only way to live where we don’t become those sad unearthly corpses.

6. “What do you believe in?” God help me if I ever say God. I believe in souls. If that means I believe in God, okay. If it means I’m a raging uneducated atheist, that’s okay too. But souls! There must be souls, I think. “I think, therefore I am”. What else can account for us? Us, people, greedy, sentimental, loving, hateful, people. I don’t believe in science when it comes to souls. Souls trump all. We exist, and we die, and perhaps there’s something left after death but perhaps there isn’t. It doesn’t matter because we have souls when we’re alive, and those souls spill out of us in everything. We gather things to us, in rooms, in books, in friends, that reflect our souls. And those who paint and those who write are all attempting to do the same thing: put into words some indescribable aspect of ourselves that we won’t ever be able to explain, but attempt and attempt nonetheless. It’s the effort in this case, not the success. Our souls don’t mind the effort, and won’t ever allow the success.

Dracula, because I think he had a soul too.