And, So It Goes (An Homage to Vonnegut)

Here is a man falling into a pit.

I dream I am falling into a pit.

I keep falling and falling, waiting to strike bottom, because it has to happen any millisecond now, because I’ve been falling so long, and I can feel my body tense and anticipatory, because it knows it’s the end as soon as I hit the bottom.

Splat!

It’s totally dark and I can’t see anything and I barely feel the air that I am falling through and maybe I’m not actually falling, but floating, but I know better and I have reached terminal velocity and yet I still fall and I keep waiting for the end, for the moment when I hit ground and everything goes black forever and ever.

But, I keep falling.

The dream will not end and I try to wake myself because this thought keeps rolling around in the very back recesses of my head that if you die in a dream, you will die in real life, an idea I heard from Randy Decker way back in 8th grade and it scared me back then, thinking I could die in my sleep, like the for real kind of dying, just because I die in my dreamland, and I remember a dream now that I am falling, a dream I had way back then, not long after Randy told me if you die in your sleep, in a dream, you will die in real life, and in that dream so long ago, I fell backwards off a cliff and I was falling and falling and I thought this is it — I am…