Borges reminds us that Schopenhauer asserted that life and dreams are pages from the same book. To read them in proper order is to live, but to browse among them is to dream.

bemused.

owlishly.

He remembers weird deeds done long ago, in his first life. Dreamlike deeds that seem impossible now. He fought a giant cat on the isle of Mona which had scales and gills and fins like a fish. He slew an army of toad men, wading up to his belly in a flooded cave. He spoke to eagles and crossed the sea on the back of a giant salmon. Did any of it act