Dream d1512-s: Viewfinder in the Clearing

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the path through the trees opened into sawdust-scented air, and I followed Lano's nose to a workshop bench where the Woodworker was already shaping something I couldn't name yet.

The Lens stood at the edge of the clearing with a tablet propped against a stump, its screen divided into thirty-two feeds. Monitors glowed from a folding table - cables snaking across the grass like roots that had given up on soil. The processing unit hummed against the workshop wall, steady as breath. The Dreamer stood beside him, not speaking, just looking at the feeds the way he looked at contact sheets.

"This one," the Dreamer said finally, touching the screen. Feed seven: a corner of the workshop where afternoon light fell across a curl of wood shaving. "This one is looking."

The Lens said, "They all have the same resolution."

"I know."

The Eye moved between the pressed specimens she had arranged on a cloth behind the workshop, lifting one, setting it down. Without turning: "Feed fourteen is recording. Feed nineteen is recording. Feed seven is looking." She paused. "Feed twenty-three is also looking."

The Lens opened his mouth and closed it.

Lano padded up to the folding table, sniffed the base of the processing unit, and sat down. The Builder crouched beside the equipment and ran a hand along the cable management. "Clean work," she said, to no one in particular. "Whoever ran these thought about heat."

"I ran these," the Lens said.

"I know," the Builder said. "Clean work."

The Woodworker held up what he'd been shaping: a rectangular frame, no glass, no lens. A viewfinder made of wood and nothing else. He crossed the clearing and handed it to the Lens without ceremony.

The Lens looked through it. It excluded twenty-nine feeds. It included the workshop corner, the curl of shaving, the angle of afternoon light.

"That's not a solution," the Lens said.

"No," the Woodworker said, and went back to the bench.

I had been walking for a long time by then, and I knew something about how the sleeping mind works - how it does not decide by reasoning but by elimination, by the simple fact that attention is narrow and the night is not. Every dream I'd had chose one image and let the rest dissolve. Not because the rest weren't real. Because the eye that sees in sleep cannot hold everything.

I didn't say this. The Philosopher could say it better. The Dreamer was already raising his camera, framing the Lens holding the wooden rectangle up to his face.

The shutter clicked. Lano's tail moved once. Bueno, I thought, though that word belonged to the dog, not to me.