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Seeing life as a dream:

I kept the homework assignment in mind ("is this a dream?") now and then during the week, but didn't do much about it -- just sort of asked the question without noodling much.  This weekend, during a walk through Central Park, one sort of feeling filled out a bit.  It was later in the afternoon, with the sun already going down -- started with the light reflected off the paint on park benches.  The light seemed such an ephemeral and vivid thing -- something without position, with this odd property of illumination.  The feeling spread to space (physical space as a dream, the space/emptiness within space), and as I was walking by the Natural History Museum where their having an exhibit on the Silk Road, the thought occurred that travel or any exploration of different cultures (the interest in Na'vi culture expressed by Eliza's daughter) is also a way of more keenly feeling the dream-like nature of our different ways of living.  Later, sitting in a restaurant, I couldn't help noticing the the ephemeral nature of our own biology too -- that young woman will soon be middle aged, the other woman sitting over there was young just a little bit ago and will soon be older still.  Maybe it's because of spending more time in second life this week playing with clothing and the strange underwater movements of flexiskirts, but it was a little difficult to distinguish between the stories and sense of physicality we set up about ourselves in our different "lives".  

Side note:  I doubt that "seeing life as a dream" means always being in a loopy (removed?) state of mind, but it was interesting to me that this style of seeing things is more available to me when I'm alone (not with a companion), also more often when outdoors and seeing trees or whatever.