Last night, I had a dream—a dream I cannot fully recall—in which I was engaged in contention with a spirit, it was not a nightmare but not totally benign. I began to sleep-walk, something I have never done before; it was not unlike sleep paralysis, something I have had in the past, in the sense that I was conscious as regards what I saw yet could not intervene in the world as usual (e.g. to turn on a light). It was because I could not turn on a light as usual that I walked into another room where a light was on, stared at the person in the bed—yet the dream continued as I looked at them, so I was both in a dream and awake at the same time. Then I snapped clean.
This morning, I noticed that my eyes had a peculiar glow to them in the mirror, as they did after my night at Hartsfell. To dream while awake. The world is magical—thus, yesterday, I stole a little electricity for my phone at a Costa; and about an hour later, sat at Nero’s, a bald man who resembled me, being about my age, approached and asked to use my charger for his phone. Per the girls in yoga pants on Instagram, what goes around comes around.
Two years ago, I spent eight hours a day for a month in meditation—at one point I walked round in a circle with my eyes fixed on my shoes. As I thought about whether I should have married a particular girl, a voice, quite external to me, said, “I have another plan for you.” There are certain things in my life I have had to do, felt compelled to—as a teenager I felt I must go to Jerusalem, but I only lived there years later (the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was my favourite place there). Now I know “the other plan”—assemble the Roundtable, return the Grail.