Three years ago, I began a strange experiment—strange even for a poet. For nine months, I seeded my dreams with recorded poetry from Harvard University’s audio archive, then tried to capture the resulting dreams on the page. I called the project Dreamfall.
I relied on Dormio, a targeted dream incubation device from the MIT Media Lab. Worn like a glove, the device’s sensors tracked my descent into hypnagogia, the borderland between waking and sleep, where thoughts give way to hallucinatory imagery. As I crossed that threshold, Dormio played a prerecorded prompt (in this case, the crackling voice of a poet). Minutes later, it would sound a gong and begin recording, and I would groggily recount my dream before it could fade from memory.
Read more: “Faulty Memory Is A Feature, Not A Bug”
So why spend nine months falling asleep to the voices of dead poets? About twenty years ago, I developed a binocular vision disorder that makes it difficult to coordinate my eyes as they travel across a printed page. I was exiled from the immersive pleasure of reading. But dreaming seemed to offer a remarkably close analogue: imaginative flight while the body remains motionless, save for the eyes flicking from left to right. If I programmed my dreams with literature, could I find a back door into the lost world of books?
When I spoke with Nautilus in 2023, I had no idea what my experiment would yield. The Taste of Rain in Buenos Aires, a collection of stories drawn from those dreams, is now out from Etruscan Press. One story, “A Sunset-Touch,” excerpted below, was seeded by a recording of Jorge Luis Borges lecturing at Harvard in 1967.
Borges became director of Argentina’s National Library just as his eyesight failed. Yet he continued to lecture extemporaneously around the world, drawing on the library he carried in his memory. He once described writing as “a guided dream.” More than a half century after his Harvard lectures, I fed his voice into Dormio and tested his claim.
The dream behind “A Sunset-Touch” came during a snowy New England winter—a season tailor-made for afternoon naps. In composing the story, I stayed faithful to its strange events but allowed myself freedom in the telling. Dream narratives do not unfold in sentences. Characters converse without speaking; whole backstories arrive in a flash of understanding; years pass in the space of an image. What feels self-evident in sleep would be bewildering on the page.
While writing “A Sunset-Touch,” I thought of myself as a dream journalist, responsible for reporting what I had witnessed, even when it made no sense. But fidelity was only part of my task. I tried to give the surreal experience enough connective tissue for readers to feel they had lived it—or dreamed it.
I hope Borges would approve.
Dream seed:
Just when we’re safest, there’s a sunset-touch,
A chorus-end from Euripides, somebody’s death.
—Robert Browning, “Bishop Blougram’s Apology” (as misquoted by Jorge Luis Borges, “The Riddle of Poetry”)
A SUNSET-TOUCH
I planned to sleep on the plane, but I’m seated next to an adorable little girl who won’t shut up.
She’s pestering her mother, who is sitting on her other side, with question after question.
“What’s that button do?”
“It turns on the reading light.”
The girl turns the reading light on and off, on and off.
“What’s that button do?” she chirps.
“It summons the flight attendant but don’t—”
Too late. The pressed button glows.
“What’s behind that door?” the girl asks. “The one with the red letters E-M-E-R-G-E-N-C-Y?”
“Don’t even think about it,” the mother snaps.
When an unsmiling flight attendant reaches us, I pretend to have pressed the button and order a Diet Coke.
Thank you, the mother mouths to me.
As I crack open my can and pour the fizzing soda into a tiny cup of ice, the girl voices further queries. She wants to know how many people are on board, which direction we’re flying, what country we’re above, and what the pilot’s middle name is.
Eventually, the mother inserts foam plugs into her ears and stops answering. Soon she is asleep.
The girl turns to me. “What keeps the plane in the air?”
“The engines,” I say.
“And what keeps the engines in the air?”
“The fuel.”
“And what keeps the fuel in the air?”
I can see I’ll soon be out of my depth. Fortunately, someone comes to the rescue. A man wearing large, owlish glasses peers over the seat in front of us. “I can tell you what keeps the plane in the air,” he announces.
“What?” says the girl.
With a twinkle in his magnified eyes, the man replies, “Angels.”
The girl looks suspiciously out of the oval window. “I don’t see one.”
“That’s because angels are invisible,” the man says.
The girl turns back to me. “Is he lying?” she demands.
Because I don’t want to get into a discussion about air pressure and fuel combustion, I back him up. “No, he’s not. Angels are real.”
“Have you ever seen one?” she asks, her brow furrowed.
“Well, no,” I admit.
“Then how do you know they’re real?”
“I spend a lot of time in libraries,” I say, “and sometimes, when I have a question and I can’t find the answer, you know what? The exact book I need turns up on my desk. Or falls off the shelf right at my feet. It’s not a coincidence. It’s the work of library angels. At least that’s what people call them.”
Seemingly satisfied with this explanation, the girl puts on headphones and starts watching the in-flight movie.
The man with the owl glasses is still twisted around in his seat. “So you believe in library angels?”
“Of course not,” I say, rattling the ice cubes in my cup.
He nods. “You’re right, obviously—they’re not really angels. They’re the dead.”
I stop rattling my ice cubes.
He holds up a leathery hand. “Don’t get the wrong idea. These aren’t poltergeists knocking books off shelves at random. These are talented scholars we’re talking about. Devoted bibliophiles. Many apply, but only the most qualified are chosen. Believe me, it’s a highly coveted afterlife profession. Most of the departed are stuck doing hard labor.”
I decide to play along. “That seems a little unfair.”
“Not as unfair as you might think,” he says. “You’d be surprised how much work goes into the execution of librarial serendipities. These ‘library angels,’ as people call them, are each responsible for thousands of branches. You wouldn’t believe the time they spend on air travel alone.”
Now I furrow my brow. “But can’t the dead fly? Or, I don’t know, float?”
“Floating is impractical, and flying takes centuries to learn.”
“Angels can fly,” I point out. “Why don’t they just flit around from library to library, doing the work?”
The man with the owl glasses turns back around and reclines his seat. “I told you,” he says with a yawn. “The angels are too busy keeping planes in the air.”
We land and, after collecting my luggage, I check into a run-down hotel (the unemployment checks only go so far). The night is sweltering and the room is a furnace. I open the window, trying to tempt in a nonexistent breeze, and lie on the bed sweating.
I’ll never fall asleep in this heat. Plus, I’m nervous about my lecture in the morning. I was surprised they asked me, frankly, as I’ve never delivered a lecture in my life. I’m just another failed academic with a PhD and no job prospects. But the letter had my name right on it, as did the plane ticket included in the envelope. What will they think if I show up red-eyed and rumpled, not having slept a wink? I glance at the digital clock; its red digits wriggle like nightcrawlers in a jar.
The next morning, after downing three espressos at a corner café, I follow the map that came with my letter. I wind through a maze of slender, cobbled streets. Laundry flaps overhead. At last, I emerge onto a small square. Before me stands the headquarters of the International Borges Society.
The headquarters turns out to be located on the second floor of a dilapidated building, above a bar where a gang of septuagenarians are already drinking cervezas and playing chess. After an absurd pantomime with the bar’s owner, I’m led up a steep staircase and let inside.
The room has the chalky smell of a century-old schoolhouse. There are a few dozen chairs, a gap-toothed ceiling fan missing two blades, and a tilted lectern partially stabilized by a wedge of yellowed newspaper. I take my place behind the lectern and wait. Dust motes swirl in the liquid morning light.
When the society members arrive, I recognize them as the well-lubricated septuagenarians from downstairs. With a general popping of hip joints, they take their seats. The men rest their fedoras on their knobby knees, and I soon realize that waiting for silence would be folly—the coughing and spitting into handkerchiefs is ceaseless.
Since Borges always improvised his talks, it’s tradition that the annual lecturer—in this case, me—arrive blind to his topic. On top of the lectern lies a black felt bag. I reach into it, jostling a collection of wooden knickknacks inside. I draw one out. It’s a carved and painted tiger.
I clear my throat. “In the jungles of literature, the tiger has stalked…” I falter and start again. “For Borges, the tiger was a symbol…” My mind goes blank. “Tyger, tyger, burning in the night…” No, that’s not it. I swallow. I’m beginning to sweat in earnest now. Why did I ever accept this invitation?
Thankfully, an ambulance passes, its wailing siren buying me a few moments. I glance at the doorway, thinking maybe I could make a run for it. I notice that someone is lingering there, half in the room, half out. The owner of the gray flannel pant leg and the white canvas shoe must be waiting to hear the beginning of my lecture before committing to the full hour. I’m surprised the leg hasn’t withdrawn already.
When the siren fades into the distance, I close my eyes and begin again. “Let’s talk about stripes,” I say. “Not the stripes of tigers but of their prey. When a herd of zebras flees a beast red in tooth and claw, their black-and-white stripes create an optical illusion. The predator can’t tell where one zebra stops and another begins. He sees a single hide, one elongated animal loping across the savanna. Where’s the neck? he’s asking himself. Because of their stripes, the zebras are like a text without spaces between the words, and the tiger can’t read it. Yet if you mark one zebra with a red stripe, making it stand out from the rest, you’ve signed its death warrant. Humans are like zebras—most of us merge with the crowd, staying off the radar of the gods. But geniuses like Jorge Luis Borges are marked with a bright red stripe, and the gods can see them very clearly. And so the gods shower them with gifts—and pain.”
One of the society members falls asleep in his chair. A woman, possibly his wife, shakes him to no effect. The rest of my lecture is accompanied by the slumbering man’s heavy snores.
When it’s over, and I’ve shaken all the sweaty palms on offer, I stumble out into the dazzling sunlight, feeling relieved and thirstier than I’ve ever been in my life.
I take a long drink at a water fountain, letting the cool jet soak my face. When I pull back and shake my head like a dog, water droplets spray onto the gray flannel pant legs and the white canvas shoes of the man standing directly behind me. The man who was lingering in the doorway during my lecture. The man with the owl glasses.
He claps me on the shoulders. “You were good. A little rocky at the beginning, but once you got going—excellent stuff. Just what we’re looking for.”
I wipe my still-dripping face and wonder if I’m suffering heat stroke. “Why are you here? And who’s we?”
“Walk with me,” he says, hooking my arm and marching me down the street. “You should be honored, you know. We don’t make this offer very often. A new position opens every twenty, maybe thirty, years.”
He steers me to the left and we pass under a stone proscenium. “In this age of algorithms”—his face screws up in disgust at the word—“some consider our work redundant, but you and I know better.”
He leads me past a cage of spider monkeys who jeer at us through the bars. “The position is unpaid, of course,” he says. “But the job is its own reward.”
We hurry by a large paddock. Quizzical-looking llamas raise their heads to stare at us. “What job?” I demand.
An elephant trumpets in the distance. “You know the answer to that question,” he says.
After a few paces, I come to a dead stop. “Library angel,” I breathe.
The man nods. “There’s a catch, though I’m sure you’ve guessed already.”
“I’d have to be dead, wouldn’t I?” I say quietly.
“Yes,” he says with a smile. “You’ll have to cross over, I’m afraid. But it’s a small price to pay.”
I feel dazed. I tug my arm free and steady myself against a nearby stone ledge.
The man polishes his glasses on his sleeve. “So, what do you say?” he asks. “Do you accept?”
I lean against the ledge, feeling the warmth baked into the stone by the morning sun. The day is already oppressively hot. My suit is damp with sweat and itchy around the collar. I think of a library, how delicious its dim, chilled air would be right now. And I imagine the relief of finally, at long last, being gainfully employed.
“I accept,” I say.
With one stroke, the man paints a red stripe across my chest. Then he shoves me backward, over the ledge and into the tiger enclosure. 
From The Taste of Rain in Buenos Aires by Will Dowd (Etruscan Press, 2026). Reprinted with permission of the publisher.
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