You are going to think I’m on crack when I tell you this, but I swear to God (mine and yours) that I am not lying. You know how there are dreams that you remember from when you were younger because they either comes repeatedly or that they were so outrageous/weird/real that you wake up thinking, “I’m never going to forget that”. Well, I used to have this dream that I was walking alone in a city and I came to a glass building that could look into another glass building from one of its glass walls. It was a pretty high building and I was standing in a sort of an indoor balcony with railings and I could not really reach the walls. As I watched the other glass building from my own glass building, I saw the many levels and the different furniture (they were wooden). In one of the level, there was a wooden chaise longue and on a different level, a lady was sitting by a table, reading. That was the end of my dream. I’m not sure why I remember it so well, probably because I was not in a lot of glass buildings when I was young or probably I was trying to make something out of it. Like, why was I in a glass building looking into another glass building? Why is there a chaise longue (probably because my mum just bought one at that time)? Why was I alone? Where was everybody else? Being young and easily distracted, these inquiries didn’t bother me for long.

And I’ve walked many cities alone since then. From Chicago to Cairo, Paris to London and just recently, I came back from New York. And while I was roaming New York aimlessly, walking up and down the streets of Manhattan, quietly apologizing to the city because I was not as impressed as I thought I would (I blame the over hype), I came to a glass building, Museum of the Modern Art. Thinking that Pollock, Riviera and Seurat could probably cheer me up, I bought a ticket in. ARTIC (Art Institute of Chicago) is maybe five and a half times more impressive. Disappointed at the small collection, I walked towards one of its glass window on the fourth floor only to find a railing and a foot space between me and the wall. I looked down and saw people walking on the first floor, looked up and was stunned. There it was, another glass building, with different levels, and its different furniture, and the chaise longe and a lady reading by a table! The lighting was right and at that moment, as if others knew, the visitors left the room and I was alone, looking into the other glass building. My childhood dream came rushing back and it was a feeling of dejavu, only…different, because instead of experiencing this before, I actually dreamt about it. So what do you call that? “Dream come true”? From that two minutes of “dream-come-true” experience, New York and I spoke on a different level.