Todo había ocurrido con la catastrófica rapidez de un sueño... y con el irreal horror de una pesadilla.

The carnage was unbelievable.

But dreams have ways of turning into nightmares.

It was shocking, deeply shocking.

It was a bizarre happening, an unprecedented situation, a grotesque situation, an almost unbelievable mischance.

but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart

Broken dreams are bad enough. But the dream that has no hope … the dream that is doomed long before it’s broken, that’s the worst of all.

It was as unbelievable as the moon catching fire.

The horror! The horror!

I had a dream, which was not at all a dream.

Dreams, she said. Broken dreams are bad enough. But the dream that has no hope...the dream that is doomed long before it’s broken, that’s the worst of all.

In the recurring dream everything has already fallen down, and I’m underneath. I’m crawling, sometimes for days, under the rubble. And as I crawl I realize that this one was the Big One. It was the earthquake that shook the whole world, and every single thing was destroyed. But this isn’t the scary part. That part always comes right before I wake up. I am crawling and then suddenly I remember: the earthquake happened years ago. This pain, this dying, this is just normal. This is how life is. In fact, I realize, there never was an earthquake. Life is just this way, broken, and I am crazy for dreaming something else.

The shock of the real.

Near about twelve my eyes suddenly opened — I had not opened them. The sleep was broken by something else. I felt a great presence around me in the room. It was a very small room. I felt a throbbing life all around me, a great vibration — almost like a hurricane, a great storm of light, joy, ecstasy. I was drowning in it. It was so tremendously real that everything became unreal. The walls of the room became unreal, the house became unreal, my own body became unreal. Everything was unreal because now there was for the first time reality.