Editor’s Note: After we received the previous letter from Alan Partridge, our newly hired Foreign Dreams Correspondent, we were a bit shaken. We put out a call for any and all information about this man (?) and the results have been less than forthcoming. We promise to expand on this story as any new information comes to light. Unfortunately as of now, all we have is the following response, which slipped silently and softly down a drainpipe and was found as one of our reporters was attempting to extricate a squirrel. Said squirrel was retrieved and interrogated as to her involvement, but her answers were inconclusive. Alan remains at large.

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To the Editors of the Surreal Times, I am glad to see that my first letter has made such a splash. I hope you will consider publishing more of my submissions and from now on will consider me somewhat of a Somnector to your well-read masses. As for the inquiries into my job, please understand it is not kept secret for anything sinister. As far as I am aware, I do not travel this country as part of a black hand of evil. Though the exact nature of my work must remain a secret, I can tell you I am a supervisor an organizer for things deliberately beyond comprehension. Suffice it to say, your publication of the Noveltiest Manifesto by my colleague Theodore Munnley fits directly into my line of work. To use his terms, my job is to ensure the rejection of entropy, to create divinity, and sow the seeds of discord wherever a status doth quo. Before you make it out to be exciting, I must ensure you, there is as much paperwork on my end as there no doubt is on yours. But this is needless exposition. Here are the dreams that I have recently collected in my travels.

A ROCKY COASTLINE

somewhere in northeastern Maine There are imprints upon this place thicker than fudge. People lived here and more importantly dreamed here. Nothing grew in the thick forests where even at noon, the darkness clings like tar. They came to the beaches for everything, food came plentiful from the ocean, and the sun & wind were more than enough to dry what couldn’t be eaten before it spoiled. They returned to the forests to sleep, to love, and to dream. I walk among ancient houses, birch bark stretched over saplings, smoke rising over roofs. They are peppered amongst colonial dwellings and modern saltbox cabins. A man runs past me, his feet lift from the ground and he continues on towards the stars.

AN AIRPORT

Vast stretches of frigid black glass rise around me, my bare feet making no sound on the similarly cold floor. Snippets of light rush by, murmuring about travel dates, about missed flights, about security. Somewhere far to my left coffee steams, its smell swirling up, red and brown, around my head. I stop, entranced for only a moment, before letting the dream unfold. Through the glass strange things unwrap themselves from the grip of the ground. Tangled strands of metal interspersed with the silvery blue of hope, the intangible blended with the tangible realness of human experience. I stride across a staircase made of lost tickets & paperbacks. I come to a door. I stumble through security before falling back into my own mind, the gate seats having pinched my neck something fierce. Massaging it I step onto the plane and let the metal machine carry me to my next destination.

TRAIN 448 (LAKE SHORE LIMITED)

I lay in the ditch next to the track, I know for certain I am dead. Just as one might know they can fly in one dream, death is just as obvious and similarly relevant. In short, one just knows these things. In my still heart, "I," or rather the consciousness that previously held such a moniker, know that I am dead. These things can get confusing.

Please bear with me.

I am lying in the ditch, I am dead, and the stars are beautiful tonight. Silently I thank the earth that my body is lying face up, for there are thousands of stars above me. Thousands and thousands twinkling above me and I cannot understand why I have never seen so many of them before. Constellations I never knew I had forgotten display themselves to me in an unending shimmering dance. They swirl in a great cosmic waltz, each step a light-year long. If I had the ability, I would not dare blink. Above me dances Oberi the musician, his pet bear cantering behind him. To the north sing the five maidens, heralds of the bitter frost. Alm the Oak Tree of the summer sky grows from nothing, blazing bright before fading away into the night. A thousand constellations of a thousand cultures. A thousand stories above me and I no tongue to repeat them. And then comes the train.

Clattering, clanking, a cacophony of steel, rolling on from someplace towards somewhere. In its vibrating wake, the stars fall like leaves. Gently floating down, buffeted by faint breezes from all directions, they settle atop me. Around me. Under me.

They cover my corpse with a glittering blanket and for a moment I pulse with the light of a thousand thousand stars.

CLUNK

The train jolts, I shift awake in my seat, the cargo line has passed and we are no longer sidelined. It is the golden hour and the golden twilight flickers off of the river as we pass it. I smile at a man fishing with his child, awash in a golden glow, and I think of stars.

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