I had a dream I met a girl in a dying world. It was an amazing place. Good and evil, light and dark, a place where you could solve riddles and magic would result, where you could defeat the evil with cunning and skill, a carnival world that strayed to the edge of madness, teetered there at the abyss, but then pulled back. Surrounded by friends, I soldiered on in a great quest, but a tiny one, discovered a deep truth, but not one that tore the world apart. There was dénouement and catharsis, everyone lived, hugs all around. We promised to write, we broke apart, and with that I was pulled out, the sun called to me, and I awoke.

It was perfect. But quickly, nearly instantly, the memory of the thing faded to mere fancy. Still, a URL burned in my mind. I won’t say what it was, it’s too embarrassing. A URL and a beautiful but indistinct face, a blog that I was to “check out and comment on.” What else could I do? I typed it into my web browser, in some desperate hope that I would find some connection to that nether world, that somehow the strange facts of the night could actually exist in this world.

It turns out wanting something doesn’t make it real.

The above is true, but with apologies to Randall Munroe. (See also.)