La vida es sueño (excerpt)

by Pedro Calderón de la Barca


Sueña el rey que es rey, y vive
con este engaño mandando,
disponiendo y gobernando;
y este aplauso, que recibe
prestado, en el viento escribe,
y en cenizas le convierte
la muerte, ¡desdicha fuerte!

¿Que hay quien intente reinar,
viendo que ha de despertar
en el sueño de la muerte?

Sueña el rico en su riqueza,
que más cuidados le ofrece;
sueña el pobre que padece
su miseria y su pobreza;
sueña el que a medrar empieza,
sueña el que afana y pretende,
sueña el que agravia y ofende,
y en el mundo, en conclusión,
todos sueñan lo que son,
aunque ninguno lo entiende.

Yo sueño que estoy aquí
destas prisiones cargado,
y soñé que en otro estado
más lisonjero me vi.

¿Qué es la vida? Un frenesí.
¿Qué es la vida? Una ilusión,
una sombra, una ficción,
y el mayor bien es pequeño:
que toda la vida es sueño,
y los sueños, sueños son.

This is an excerpt from one of my favorite literary classics works, La Vida es Sueño. Seemed appropriate... I know I have dreamt, we all do every night. I just have been in a void of memoirs... No remembrance of what has gone through my psyche... Perhaps dreaming is milder and peaceful now... Perhaps life is a dream after all, a long dream that is deep and never ends... Perhaps all shades of love have changed the grimmest sides...

Executioner's Blade

A frenzy filling my senses, as an alarm sets off in the darkness. Raindrops fall making the ground unstable and shaky. Still, desperation moves mountains, and the dread goes on...

Blurred vision. An insane run seems to be taking place... Nowhere to hide... A shade follows close, sometimes letting itself be lost in the shadows of the forest.

Beyond midnight, and the sky has no stars to light the way, neither it has a moon to lit the journey. Complete darkness, the thump of a heart's beat becomes present, as it goes on in a higher pitch by the second...

The sound of a razor sharp blade echoes, as the blade bites the wood of trees and the branches that comes to meet it. It is out for blood... It is out to have fun. It woun't stop until its dark desire comes true...

I run. I see the blurred vision, and female eyes with tears made up of blood. Rain blurs all images, all shadows, all shapes...

A glimmer halts me on my tracks, a glimmer coming too fast to try slitting my throat... Only a glimpse at the velvet glove of the entity that shall be known as my executioner...

And a beeping sound wakes me up.

Broken tooth

A blur of a memory, but it is as it is...

Running until I found someone among a crowd, then it all vanished... This blurred entity asked what I needed, and I stretched my hands to it, showing a tooth. He went like Ah! and tried taking it, but I closed my hand and concealed the tooth.

But you want it back in its right place, not? He said, in a husky dreamy shady voice... I just tilted my head, thinking. Openned my hand to take a look at the tooth, and found it bleeding.

Woke up.

The whore and the bloody hand

The vision is very, very blurred. A man walking with an arm raised before him... Blurred images in darkyones of yellow. Very murky setting, streets filled with crowds, then he turns and its all empty but murky...

Intermission

A corroded door. I opened it, and the interior of a messy house is revealed. The colors everywhere look as if faded, darks and yellowish hues are the only colors picked by my eyes. In the room there seems to be a couple: a blonde gal around her fourties and a guy that felt familiar. She had the look of a bar girl of the 20's, complete with boa and feathers. They seemed to be cuddling, as soon as the guy realized I was in the room he went to say hello to me as if nothing where happenning. Oh, yes, the guy was familiar indeed, although he looked different... I was upset, ranting about how dare him bring to our home that blonde trash. She jumps in to the argument telling him that how could he deceive her, that it was not his home only.

Intermission

The guy, dressed in rags, walking around pushing himself to go on. His voice an eternal whine of pain. His right arm extended, his hand kept within a box covered all by blood and dirt. The box had holes, from which you could peak into the bloody hand. I heard a voice over, as if getting inside the guy's head "They laugh, they mock me... they know nothing of my pain... I rot, cancer eats my hand, makes its flesh fall little by little, piece by piece... I rot... eaten alive... the pain". Then it hits me, although the vision is blurred, the voice and tone are the same as Luis Felipe, my half-brother from Texas. The blurred shape has hints of his face and bodytype. He goes on whining and keeping his extended bloody arm...

Intermission

Blonde hacking up at my familiar guy with a purse, while I was hacking him up with bare hands. She stops as she gets thrown in the floor. He pushes me towards him and starts kissing me deadly, pushing a door and pushing me through it into the darkness.

Intermission

Whining bloody hand guy keeps walking, and I see his box-covered hand from many angles. Final shot, a close-up to one of the bloody holes when the image within shifts to a bloody eye...

And I woke up, startled.