Dreams never create themselves
out of thin air.
A chance meeting-
A flicker of memory-
A worry beneath our consciousness-
Anything at all in waking hours
can trigger a dream-scape
which (more often than not)
becomes a weird collage of images,
a bizarre story line
seemingly making perfect sense
when lost in the odd land of dreams.

Only in dreams, one might say
"Everything happens for a reason".
In the unconsciousness of sleep,
the brain retrieves bits and bytes
from its vast databank
of memory and experience,
past and present,
mixing it up into a strangely logical soup.

In the wakefulness
of "real life"
Nothing really happens
"for a reason".
The Universe is
yawningly indifferent
to our personal affairs,
leaving us to our own devices.


We are masters of our fates
only to a certain extent,
until random events change our course.
We call it sweet serendipity
when things go as planned.
But when things go awry
(as they often will)
we  comfort ourselves
with that old saw
"Everything happens for a reason",
in vain attempts to explain
the inexplicable,
to create meaning where none exists.
I am not buying that sentiment.

Eileen Auger
5/6/14