There is an orgiastic quality to their collective presence and awareness of you, whether or not eyes meet. One dreamscape seems to hold a moment of loving revelry, a feeling of unity in a group — another of paranoia. Ah! one of thinly veiled jealousy, another of desires yet unconsummated.
As you move from room to room in an labyrinthine mansion, then on to the sprawling yard and woods behind it, you witness these different moments of communion: some you partake of, others you recognize but observe only in passing.
These beings are an immediate pantheon in the earthly strata of your mind: people embodied and active in their interwoven lives, each blazing trails with mixes of action and stagnation. They are the descent into flesh of instincts that seem transcendent — sacrosanct if nothing else to the world. And this intersection of universality with earthly role is the cosmic utility of the group, a larger role that comes of many parts composing something greater than their sum.
A vast gathering casts a large shadow highlighting many flickers within it; something harder to comprehend at times than one’s own, and just as difficult to make adjustments to. A hungry ghost may seek there, wishing to be something to everyone.
It is a different octave of desire than the scorpion’s. It is an urge to merge, a pariah branded in the vast ocean. A longing, a humanitarian love perhaps distracted by the many, bound up in novelty, risking to forget the agency within.
To bind or to sever. We weigh each dream scene on a silver scale, that we may know when to join in the improv gallery of every present passing moment.