What do I see in my mind’s misty eye? An outpost in space. An ocean creature with a sense of humor, but if not an octopus, what? A crumbling empire and a feisty rebel — where have I heard THAT before? 

A wanderer armed with nothing but a guitar because weapons never brought him peace. Why is he wandering? Are his loved ones scattered to the winds? Perhaps his sisters and brothers are wandering, too, all of them seeking the others, or seeking a talisman of some sort, the Hitchcockian maguffin that will restore sense to the universe and reunite the family that was.

As for the storyteller, so are his tales scattered to the winds. He remembers bits and pieces, but they refuse to coalesce into any perceivable order. Here is the tailor, and there is the seamstress, but they have no whole cloth and nothing approaching nine yards. The tinker and the almost-princess stroll along the road to the village, each unaware that the dog is trying to tell them something. And the cat is the key to everything, but it is distracted by a family of chipmunks living under the driveway.

The flower blooms for a day once every three years, and she missed it and so she is inconsolable. The photographs show her what she missed but cannot capture every angle or the fragrance or the crowd’s quiet awe, and that is when she becomes obsessed with inventing something better than a camera.

The road is rockier and steeper than he remembers, and he may have to get out of the car and walk, unless he can coax the old beater up one — more — hill — but no. And so the hike is begun. This will add days to the journey, and all he has is hours. Now what?

Am I still in space, or have I been under the sea this whole time? My mind’s misty eye thinks it saw a desert, but then the car was in a mountainous forest, and the brothers and sisters were in every place.

For 1,001 nights the prisoner must tell another story or suffer the ultimate penalty. “Here I am, entertain me or die.” The prisoner loves the challenge and hates the ultimate consequence.

Of course a prehistoric monster rises from the sea, the result of insane testing of weapons too awful for the imagination. What other result could be possible? And of course the spies and their special team are forced to kill one or two dozen guards and miscellaneous underlings.

“You may have seen me in last summer’s No. 1 blockbuster,” he purred to his beautiful companion. “I was Underling #4, the guard who shouted, ‘They’re here!’ before being dismembered by the heroine.”

Somewhere down the beach, she thought she heard an animal howl. It was not a cry of pain; rather it seemed to be a primal cry of ecstasy, as if the creature knew that its mission to maintain and perpetuate the species had been accomplished with the release of the most joyful energy it had ever expended.

All of this passes before my mind’s misty eye, and I thank God for the burst of imagery and music and emotion. For a few moments the anxious feeling had been tucked away and all I could see was what I saw. Which of the sights was real and which the stuff of dreams; who was an authentic friend and who the actual villain?

I sit down with a pack of cards and a roll of dice, and it all begins to unfold in real time — as if anything about time can be described as real.

“Is this the beginning, the middle, or the end?” I ask and am astonished by the answer.