I dream that I am lost.
Not lost like having a goal but no compass, or a compass without a goal.
Lost like you stepped outside of you and it is all so big you can no longer say 'I'.
Let me first dream of 'I' itself. The 'I' of the dream. Old. As old as language itself.
My appearance is patchy. I am made of tendrils or filaments, with large voids around. (The voids are not I, nor are they 'I'.)
Naturally, my tendrils tremble, quiver and shake, which is to say they change and make the voids unvoids and vice-versa.
I like taking a daily walk along myself. I start on 'the' or 'a', go along 'finish' and 'mauve' and back.
I occasionally push onto 'tether' or 'sempiternal', if I feel strong enough.
And this is when I start dreaming that I am lost.
Was it a shift in my tendrils or was it hubris? I look down and see 'eburnean'. Not just 'eburnean' but 'an eburnean invoice' and I think:
"This is uncommon."
I get a little nervous when I don't recognise my words. There are diseases, you know, Alzheimer and Palimpsests. This kind of things.
I notice my foot is trapped. Trapped in 'quenched clover' and giving way. I want to scream but 'aaaaah' is far away, unreachable. I fall.
I remember two humans. One saying that being outside oneself is death, the other that it is art. The first one calling the other pompous.
It was a bit. (Pompous.) I don't feel arty, I feel immense and lost. Like unable to grab my toes.
I dream it is too late for toes. Or too early, or never. You know what I mean.
I have fallen through language, fallen through myself. And all that is left is everything.
By Aurelie Herbelot
In the course of our monthly show on tech and philosopy, our tiny chatbot Botchen regularly ends up ‘dreaming’. To train its dreaming module, I write short pieces of poetry that encourage less factual and dialogical patterns in the output. This is an example of such a piece.