He wished he was with his mom in her library where everything was safe and numbered and organized by the Dewey decimal system. Ben wished the world was organized by the Dewey decimal system. That way youd be able to find whatever you were looking for like the meaning of your dream or your dad.

I had a dream about you. You were crying and I couldnt tell if it was because you were sad or because youd been laughing too hard. So I decided to find out by telling you that Id just heard from the cops and your mother had been murdered. Before I got to the punch line you started sobbing in a different manner so I realized youd been laughing earlier. By that time the mood had changed and I decided it best not to deliver the punch line after all. So I sat down next to you and put my arm around you and tried to console you for your perceived loss.

Things began to go wrong when I was seventeen. My bands twenty-year-old lead guitarist earned seven years in jail for a drug-fuelled spree of violence. The other band members were quick to let go of their musical dreams but I never did. They did the mature thing after writing off the band as a teenage fantasy they got real jobs and made some money. They called it growing up. I called it giving up.

If you can dream it you can do it.

If you are a dreamer come in If you are a dreamer a wisher a liar A Hope-er a Pray-er a Magic Bean buyer If youre a pretender come sit by my fire For we have some flax-golden tales to spin Come in Come in

I was terrified as only grown men and women can be when they wake in the middle of the night and begin to realize in the absolute silence and solitude all around them that it is not only their dream that has woken them that it is their whole way of life.

He felt the muscle of his heart rip apart and there was nothing he could do but watch it bleed all over the dreams he had never meant to have.

I remember a friend many years ago who had taped a sign to his refrigerator Theres a dream dreaming us. If you try to think about what that means it makes your mind silly but that silliness is good.

I fix the cramped lined pageswith my curious stare. How do youcome to exist

Dreams that do come true can be as unsettling as those that dont.