--- title: "Meaning & Key Takeaway of: Last year I had a very unusual…" description: "\"“Last year I had a very unusual experience. I was awake, with my eyes closed, when I had a dream. It was a small dream about time. I was dead, I guess,..." image: "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/891/annie-dillard-509_consciousness_last-year-i-had-a-very-unusual-experienc_432201.jpg" --- # Last year I had a very unusual experience. I was awake… ![“Last year I had a very unusual experience. I was awake, with my eyes closed, when I had a dream. It was a small dream about time. I was dead, I guess, in deep black space high up among many white stars. My own consciousness had been disclosed to me, and I was happy. Then I saw far below me a long…” quote by Annie Dillard](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/891/annie-dillard-509_consciousness_last-year-i-had-a-very-unusual-experienc_432201.jpg) [Download](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/891/annie-dillard-509_consciousness_last-year-i-had-a-very-unusual-experienc_432201.jpg) [Open image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/891/annie-dillard-509_consciousness_last-year-i-had-a-very-unusual-experienc_432201.jpg) > ““Last year I had a very unusual experience. I was awake, with my eyes closed, when I had a dream. It was a small dream about time. I was dead, I guess, in deep black space high up among many white stars. My own consciousness had been disclosed to me, and I was happy. Then I saw far below me a long, curved band of color. As I came closer, I saw that it stretched endlessly in either direction, and I understood that I was seeing all the time of the planet where I had lived. It looked like a woman’s tweed scarf; the longer I studied any one spot, the more dots of color I saw. There was no end to the deepness and variety of the dots. At length, I started to look for my time, but, although more and more specks of color and deeper and more intricate textures appeared in the fabric, I couldn’t find my time, or any time at all that I recognized as being near my time. I couldn’t make out so much as a pyramid. Yet as I looked at the band of time, all the individual people, I understood with special clarity, were living at the very moment with great emotion, in intricate detail, in their individual times and places, and they were dying and being replaced by ever more people, one by one, like stitches in which whole worlds of feeling and energy were wrapped, in a never-ending cloth. I remembered suddenly the color and texture of our life as we knew it- these things had been utterly forgotten- and I thought as I searched for it on the limitless band, “that was a good time then, a good time to be living.” And I began to remember our time. I recalled green fields with carrots growing, one by one, in slender rows. Men and women in bright vests and scarves came and pulled the carrots out of the soil and carried them in baskets to shaded kitchens, where they scrubbed them with yellow brushes under running water…I saw may apples in forest, erupting through leaf-strewn paths. Cells on the root hairs of sycamores split and divided and apples grew striped and spotted in the fall. Mountains kept their cool caves, and squirrels raced home to their nests through sunlight and shade. I remembered the ocean, and I seemed to be in the ocean myself, swimming over orange crabs that looked like coral, or off the deep Atlantic banks where whitefish school. Or again I saw the tops of poplars, and the whole sky brushed with clouds in pallid streaks, under which wilds ducks flew, and called, one by one, and flew on. All these things I saw. Scenes grew in depth and sunlit detail before my eyes, and were replaced by ever more scenes, as I remembered the life of my time with increasing feeling. At last I saw the earth as a globe in space, and I recalled the ocean’s shape and the form of continents, saying to myself with surprise as I looked at the planet, “Yes, that’s how it was then, that part there we called ‘France’”. I was filled with the deep affection of nostalgia- and then I opened my eyes.”” [Annie Dillard](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/annie-dillard/) ## About This Quote This interpretation was drafted with AI assistance. It is one reading of the quote, not the author's own explanation. A vivid dream of time as a fabric reveals the interconnectedness of lives, the fleeting nature of moments, and the beauty in ordinary scenes. **In simple terms:** Dream shows time as a fabric linking all lives and moments. Key Takeaway See life as an interconnected tapestry. Themes time interconnectedness impermanence Mood contemplative poetic Type philosophical inspirational When to use this quote - meditation on impermanence - journaling daily moments - appreciating routine Key Concepts existential cosmic mindfulness Questions to Reflect On - How does seeing time as a fabric change your view of daily life? - What ordinary moments hold deeper meaning for you? A Different Perspective Dreams are subjective and may not reflect objective reality. ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet [Consciousness](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/consciousness/) [Dreams](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/dreams/) [History](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/history/) [Memory](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/memory/) [Men and women](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/men-and-women/) [Nature](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/nature/) [Reality](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/reality/) [Time](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/time/) ## Related quotes > [Being shoved into the top-40 scene was an unusual experience. It was great I'd become accessible to a huge audience but not terribly fulfilling.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/david-bowie/being-shoved-into-the-top-40-scene-was-an-unusual-experience-it-was/) [David Bowie](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/david-bowie/) > [While asleep, I had an unusual experience. 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Can I help it if I still dream time to time?](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/tom-petty/yeah-the-world-would-swing-if-i-were-king-can-i-help-it-if-i-still/) [Tom Petty](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/tom-petty/) > [Set a big dream and put your time and thinking into chasing it, your painful memories will have no room to bother you again.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/anonymous/set-a-big-dream-and-put-your-time-and-thinking-into-chasing-it-your/) [Anonymous](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/anonymous/) > [I always dream of a time. 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Hodge](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/t-f-hodge/) > [Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between the stimulus and response and, in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/rollo-may/human-freedom-involves-our-capacity-to-pause-between-the-stimulus-and/) [Rollo May](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/rollo-may/) [Browse all 6,062 Consciousness quotes ](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/consciousness/) ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“Last year I had a very unusual experience. I was awake, with my eyes closed, when I had a dream. It was a small dream about time. I was dead, I guess, in deep black space high up among many white stars. My own consciousness had been disclosed to me, and I was happy. Then I saw far below me a long, curved band of color. As I came closer, I saw that it stretched endlessly in either direction, and I understood that I was seeing all the time of the planet where I had lived. It looked like a woman’s tweed scarf; the longer I studied any one spot, the more dots of color I saw. There was no end to the deepness and variety of the dots. At length, I started to look for my time, but, although more and more specks of color and deeper and more intricate textures appeared in the fabric, I couldn’t find my time, or any time at all that I recognized as being near my time. I couldn’t make out so much as a pyramid. Yet as I looked at the band of time, all the individual people, I understood with special clarity, were living at the very moment with great emotion, in intricate detail, in their individual times and places, and they were dying and being replaced by ever more people, one by one, like stitches in which whole worlds of feeling and energy were wrapped, in a never-ending cloth. I remembered suddenly the color and texture of our life as we knew it- these things had been utterly forgotten- and I thought as I searched for it on the limitless band, “that was a good time then, a good time to be living.” And I began to remember our time. I recalled green fields with carrots growing, one by one, in slender rows. Men and women in bright vests and scarves came and pulled the carrots out of the soil and carried them in baskets to shaded kitchens, where they scrubbed them with yellow brushes under running water…I saw may apples in forest, erupting through leaf-strewn paths. Cells on the root hairs of sycamores split and divided and apples grew striped and spotted in the fall. Mountains kept their cool caves, and squirrels raced home to their nests through sunlight and shade. I remembered the ocean, and I seemed to be in the ocean myself, swimming over orange crabs that looked like coral, or off the deep Atlantic banks where whitefish school. Or again I saw the tops of poplars, and the whole sky brushed with clouds in pallid streaks, under which wilds ducks flew, and called, one by one, and flew on. All these things I saw. Scenes grew in depth and sunlit detail before my eyes, and were replaced by ever more scenes, as I remembered the life of my time with increasing feeling. At last I saw the earth as a globe in space, and I recalled the ocean’s shape and the form of continents, saying to myself with surprise as I looked at the planet, “Yes, that’s how it was then, that part there we called ‘France’”. 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