A month ago, I dreamed I was already in heaven—which is to say, I was somewhere astonishing and didn’t realize it, because apparently that’s the human condition.
It started in a classroom, naturally. I was teaching at a college that felt familiar but off—like a liberal arts Hogwarts or a Wes Anderson remake of Dead Poets Society. The students were unnervingly sharp. Not freshmen. These were postgrads of the soul—opinionated, caffeinated, and engaged with the material in ways that implied they’d actually done the reading.
We were knee-deep in discussion when I glanced out the window and saw the rain falling—not pelting, but gliding, like silk scarves from the sky. I drifted for one moment. That was all Tim Miller needed.
Tim, a student and part-time podcast prophet, seized the room like a man born to lecture. He told everyone to open the expensive blue textbook. The one I assigned. The one I had never read. I stared at the cover like it was an unfamiliar casserole I’d brought to a potluck. “What did you think?” I asked, bluffing. “It’s okay,” they said. The academic equivalent of a shrug at your own funeral. I nodded, defeated, and dismissed them early—a mercy for us all.
Outside the door, a nearsighted colleague half my age pushed a convoy of book carts like a noble foot soldier. I offered help. He smiled, already finished. I was obsolete, politely.
I wandered the campus like a ghost who hadn’t been told he was dead. Then I saw it: a green coffee mug I’d left behind earlier, now glowing like a sacred artifact on a forgotten table. I snatched it and jogged through the rain to the library. I placed it on a windowsill with reverence, and two librarians appeared—silent, reverent, stunned. I’d returned the Holy Mug. They smiled as if I’d cured blindness.
Still raining. Still warm. Still beautiful. I pulled out my phone—also green, because apparently I was living inside an emerald dream. It was dusted with beach sand, and I wiped it down like it was a relic I wasn’t worthy to hold.
I wasn’t driving. I never drove. Why ruin the moment? I walked. Five miles, barefoot, maybe. The rain was gentle, more sacrament than storm.
Then, through the mist, I saw my home.
Three pyramids, each one the size of a small mountain, woven from stone in purple and gold. They spiraled into the sky like something the gods forgot to take with them. I’ve always loved purple. It makes sense now. But the gold—that was new. I’ve spent a lifetime disliking gold. Too gaudy. Too Trump Tower. Too cheap. But this gold wasn’t decoration—it was divine. It pulsed. It whispered. It glowed like it remembered being forged in the heart of stars.
And it hit me.
I lived there. In that zigzagged trio of pyramids, tucked in the mist. It was mine. I’d always been there. Somehow, until that moment, I’d failed to see it.
Then I woke up.
No rain. No pyramids. Just me, blinking in the early gray, stunned by the feeling that I’d glimpsed something holy and managed to mistake it for Tuesday.
And I wondered: How much of life am I sleepwalking through? What miracles have I mislabeled as mundane? What if heaven isn’t a reward but a frequency we forget to tune in?
Cinemorphosis 
Leave a comment