Berkeley.

Dreamed last night of you, going with your family to meet my uncle, but ending up instead at a landfill and then at a cafe in the mountains where vending machines sold euro coins which were used as tokens for buying bicycle repair kits of fantastic complexity out of other vending machines. There you, your brother, your father and mother, no one much concerned at how often I got them lost or at the smell of the garbage. With what little control I had over the dream I could find nothing better to do than hold you in my arms but as I did it was clear to me that I would have to live without you for at least another three years and knowing that also you held me tightly without speaking.

…

They say that the world is but a stage, and at various times you do become conscious that you are merely repeating lines and following stage directions that have nothing to do with you as you know yourself to be. At other times, and the night before last was one of these, you become aware that a new actor is stepping onto the boards, not of the world but of your mind, and you know, watching him, that he will say your lines better than you, with grace and passion and clarity that you so often could only imagine to be possible, but while you are saying, “Thank God you’re here, where have you been all this time?” you know also that this new creature peering at you through the haze of the spotlights cares nothing for what he will say in his imitations of you: that he will vanquish your existence simply by duplicating it so well and without the blood and pounding heart.

But then in time you immerse yourself in the play, forget that you are watching and not doing, and that you are any different from your usurper.