There is a mouse running around my house. I've named him Mr. Jangles, sort of?after the Green Mile "character" of the same name — miracles do happen. I've tried to catch him several times but he keeps running away into dark corners and scaling heights I cannot reach, so I've let him be. I just hope he isn't leaving?any unpleasant surprises behind the curtains. I've heard him squeak, so he does make noise. One time at night, Mr. Jangles bumped into my foot and it startled me so, that my knee went into reflex action overdrive time and slammed into my desk. But that's okay.

~~~

I have a lot of crazy dreams. One of the more recent ones was like this, and I'll describe in present tense: it?is like a video played in reverse, vintagely sepia-toned yet full of saturated color. Color so vivid and near to my heart. I see pews, like in a church, and I also see stained glass — pieces of it, strewn all over the floor and on the seats. The glass is shattered, kaleidoscopic shards pointing in every direction and reflecting some brilliant sun overhead. This isn't the most significant item of note, however — oh no, that distinction belongs to what has actually broken the stained glass window. Can you guess what it is? It is a pure diamond, bigger than a box of baseballs, heavier than one who has come to know life and then lost it, and this diamond was somehow projected through the window to land on a lush red carpeting leading up to the pulpit where a book lays.

I don't see the book well enough. It appears to be handcrafted, meticulously-binded, edges a bit yellow and frayed, but with dust on the cover. The title… I can't make out, and even if I could, I don't think I would remember it, as the glassy constellations reflecting the sunshine are dancing so brilliantly in a geometric intercourse with this unbelievably yet credible true diamond, the centerpiece of the atrium.

And somehow, I know that despite the beauty this stained glass window holds?– and I have no clue what it originally looked like when whole –?it is nothing, absolutely nothing in the presence of the diamond. I step closer, but as I do, with each motion, the diamond moves further away, as if time is now reversing, everything else going backward as I move forward. So, I stop. The diamond is a few feet off the floor now.

I gaze.

~~~

And then there's the other dream where I came to better understand the nature of Torleys in other worlds. It involves me, looking into the water in a fountain, and this fountain seems to be set in the courtyard of the church I have previously described. This fountain is a gateway, not of things but of ideas — the water itself tastes cool and clean and if I drop a penny in, it will behave without reason to suspect there is any great mystical magic here. But still, I feel waves — the rippleshock — from the other side, or sides. I know that gazing into the pool and concentrating my will, will allow me to tune into the thoughts + feelings of other Torleys and influence them. And they can do the same to me, so we are all constantly tuning each other as we are in concentration.

Together, like fold-out dolls snipped from paper, we are essentially the same but different around the frayed edges. And if enough of us concentrate at any given time, then spacetime itself is "beckoned" and "compelled" to slow. Like water freezing, except that time does not go hard and brittle; rather, it turns into a colder gel not unlike toothpaste. It's not so much any great concentration or focus as the quantality of ideas, the brainstorm taking place in a miniature wave tank and nurturing further embellishments like the fluorishes on fine calligraphy. And by using this power, I believe that one day, enough Torleys will be able to hold the diamond in place, long enough for me — Torley prime –?to reach out to it.

It's just a theory.