Unfinished Reality: Dreams, Longing, and Homelessness
Dreams tell us that the world is unstable, the self is homeless, and reality is unfinished — and that imagination keeps trying, stubbornly and imperfectly, to make something livable out of that fact. In House of Day, House of Night , this instability often takes the form of interiors and houses that refuse to anchor us. “Marta’s house is like her,” Tokarczuk writes — it knows nothing of God, the world, or even itself. It contains only one moment, a vast present that stretches in all directions, overwhelming and not made for humankind. This is not a refuge but a condition: existence without guarantees, without narrative comfort. Dreams move effortlessly through such spaces because reality itself is already porous. Light hides where it should not — “in the souls of people and animals, in hibernation” — while the moon ferries souls elsewhere like a transport ship. Seasons distort perception; September turns psychedelic under mist and shadow. The world feels alive, but strangely indiffe...
