Give me an attic and I will fill it into bursting with dreams. All assortment, permutation, swatches and textures of dreams. Childish dreams of cotton candy, marbled balloons and rubbery gums punctuated with maternal agonies of domestic scatter — broken limbs of a tearful sister’s dolls, building blocks, bricks, toy guns, wooden ponies, dog eared storybooks and torn kites — yes, remember those incredibly cheery kites, which can now only drift in pleasant daze in recollection of tangled flights.

Somewhere by the far corner I’ll stack habitual dreams — reveries of sand and water, unbounded trek and exploit, a horseback ride down a slope pillared with pines and peppered by crisp morning air, a teasing hammock under a fertile mango tree on a blistering summer afternoon — while vulnerably drowned in crude trappings of demanding paperclips, insolent keyboards, rebellious shredders, invasive phone shrieks and oppressive fluorescents.

Its walls will be papered with ambitious dreams: delusions and aspirations — grandeur, magnitude and infinity inhabited and claimed only by the most restless of imagination-precious crops only the most determined of passions can defy to harvest. Vision will be varnished on swathed canvasses — brave testament of the lushness of creative impulses that shall transcend the triviality of the bearer.

There will be unlocked chests on the left to store unpleasant dreams: aches, frustrations, disillusionments and the constant ally and shaper of wisdom and understanding — the state of brokenness. The key will not be thrown into rivers, lakes or ponds but best kept at hand, for that throbbing moment of bittersweet nostalgia when you lift the lid and peek inside as if to greet a vaguely-familiar wounded friend.

Neatly piled on the sharp angle where two walls wed, allow me to assemble thirsty dreams and longings — anchored arms orbiting a torso, legs twined around hips, a gentle pull or warm nestle in the unholy hours between sunsets and the first of rooster crows-gentle geometries of tenderness buried for a moment in sheets and pillows, stirred by rhythms of breathing and discreet half-whispers in celebration of a genial sleep.

The windowsills will be book-ended with unwelcome dreams — nightmares and melancholy — goodbyes lumped in throats, pickled emotions as stale as grandmother’s yellowed prescriptions, polite conversations and insufferable silences, a white coffin being lowered in verdant greens, watching misery flicker in the eye of someone who laughs the loudest.

There will be no rugs in the attic, for they hide the quivering hopefulness of the wooden floorboards. Hopefulness is a dream, too, and it would be such rude prejudice to shroud its modest dignity with discounted shoddy linoleum. In this hopefulness I would rather lay motionless, eyes shut, draining the coldness of the wood who kiss the delicate strands at the back of my neck. Or, sometimes, in this intentionally frozen stillness my eyes would flutter open and carry on it’s enduring romance with the ceiling, draining the circus in my head into a delicious infinity of empty bliss and innocence.

Wistfulness, wishful thinking, they will sit languidly in an absent couch like twins forever ensnared in umbilical inheritance, bound by reciprocation and hereditary accidents; for they are compulsory dreams too — for it is in their honor created abundant beauty to be desired, beauty gifted with wings to pursue their special soul mates and muses.

This will be my private attic, a concealed room.

As an imperative I want it hidden for selfish reasons. Once in a while, out of confidence or fondness I’d invite another spirit to lie down in it’s naked floors, to soak up the shivering radiance of its apologetic flaws (and concealed spells, if I may speak in escalating conceit). Yet the probable sweet embrace or impromptu departure of an invited guest is a dreadful ambivalence that inhibits even the most fervent concierge to fling the doors open and welcome the flood of intrusions to leave an awkward trail drenched with loam, mud and woe.

The choice remains as they always were and always will: suspend your dreams in a visible pulpit and hazard an ache; unsympathetically revel in the exquisite margins of a garret smeared of beauty and anonymous tales and forever injure yourself with deficiency and want.

Or in the attic of sadness quietly spread your wings.

Have you ever had that disconcerting feeling of being totally detached from your very own life and you’re reduced into powerless self-voyeurism? Like you’re observing your very own proceeding in confusion while your conciousness frantically waves from a distant trying to catch up with your empty shell?

In the past few weeks, that kind of blah-ness is quite a pervasive condition on me and no matter how I struggle for clarity or directional shift, I can’t help but get this perpetual twilight zone smog. Names, faces, events and emotions are reduced into one incoherent blur and many times over I get the absurd disposition that my life is one protracted stretch of horrific and surreal scenes strung together.

Despite the abundance of daily stories to write about, that creative spark seems to have taken a holiday. Missing. Out of reach. Elsuive. I should console myself of the thought that life, although not that spectacular in excessive ways, have been quite permitting. There’s nothing much to whine about and for that I’m thankful.

Omnipresent as ever is that pang of sadness. It didn’t help me that I have a few striking episodes of total astonishment over complete strangers who remind me of that one absolute deficit that’s somewhat within grasp but remains perversely unreachable, dodging me, rolling with teasing laughter. Being swaggering and self-absorbed.

I woke up in the middle of the night and lethargy descended like a malicious cloud threatening a predictable downpour. I remain very still, lying in bed, wide-eyed, bated-breathed, naked, waiting for something to hit me.