the liminal membrane between waking life and the life of the dream seems living, breathing, permeable. it has a heartbeat. its threshold cannot be crossed completely, as it is no less one part than it is the other.
yet the life of the dream, though constituted by and made up of the stuff of waking life, is necessarily distinct from it, in the very fact of the autonomy of the unmediated mind: here, we are the world itself, and all that exists within seems to have its basis in us. even when we cognize that we are dreaming and take control, consciousness remains the motor: it allows us to propel the machine forward with ourselves in the driver’s seat.
still, even in the life of the dream comprehended as such, there is present the notion, however incongruously small, of ‘waking life’: of existence as otherwise, by which we become aware of the world we are occupying through our awareness of the one we are not.