A Dream of Invitations and Names

Recently a dream drifted through the night like a delicate thread. It carried a scene of a room filled with two hundred Spanish writers, all summoned for this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, a celebration of Spain that felt almost ceremonial in its grandeur. The dream carried warmth at first, a bright invitation that promised something meaningful and grand. Then it shifted, turning sharper, a corridor of reality slicing through the fantasy. A senior figure from the Ministry of Culture appeared in the dream, followed by another from Public Works or Hunting Policies, delivering news that seemed both exciting and overwhelming. The voices all spoke in unison with a cadence that made the temperature rise and a flutter travel through the chest. They asked about the practical details of travel and gear, whether the air in Frankfurt would be cold enough for an anorak, whether Aramburu and Muñoz Molina would attend, and whether the invitation carried the weight of a future full of chances. The answers came with a compressed certainty: yes to everything. Yes, yes, yes. And then, almost as a whisper, a closing line: We will talk, Alberto. The name hung in the air, tiny and persistent, until the dream itself dissolved and the screen turned to static. The moment sharpened into a sting of recognition that the dream might be a mirror. The name became a riddle and a risk, a question about identity that pulled at the edges of sleep. There was a sudden ache of fear, a sense of being seen too clearly, and the urge to retreat from the spotlight that could follow any real invitation into the bright room of public life. The irregular pulse of the phone pressed back into memory, and the dream pushed forward with a stubborn insistence. The figure of Albert, a self-assured version who managed schedules and meetings, stood at the brink of possibility, yet the dream refused to dissolve into certainty. A decision lingered in the air, a switchboard of responsibilities that could connect to a world where every call carried consequence. The protagonist of the dream, though unnamed here, tried to explain the situation aloud, the way someone might hum a familiar tune to steady a nerve. Frankfurt, Alberto, the job, the title of minister, all of it collided in a tense swirl of sounds that sounded almost like a single word repeated with rising pitch. There was a moment of control and then a rush of confusion that made the mind stumble. The attempt to dial a trusted number ended up blurred by the strange echo of a dream, a reminder that some connections stay only in sleep. The dreamer trusted a private sense of self, but the waking impulse insisted on verification. The moment of contact with the real world arrived as a cascade of small, almost ridiculous acts: posting a note about the dream to a familiar chat, then realizing the room was silent, then noticing the quiet after the message had no echo. The protagonist spoke of a name with a tremor and then froze, realizing that in the world outside the dream, the name could be borrowed or misused by others. The sense of agency flickered, as if someone had borrowed a personal passport and ran it through the wrong gate. A voice in the back of the head whispered that perhaps the name had been given away without consent, that the dream had played with the idea of someone else’s identity in the same moment it claimed it as one’s own. When the attempt to reach out through a familiar channel met with digital stillness, there came a reminder that the world of invitations can be fickle and the line between aspiration and pressure can blur. The dream continued to unfold with a tension that felt almost tangible: a walk through a city where the familiar streets felt alien, a street three kilometers from a living room that did not belong to the dream but was suddenly visible through it. There was a small, stubborn thread of humor in the scene, a human need to know one’s own name and to be seen by friends who truly understand. A friend’s message finally arrived, quiet and simple, asking for identity in a moment that seemed to demand a user profile rather than a face. The exchange carried a sting of vulnerability, a reminder that recognition can arrive in a room of strangers who know more than the person realizes. In the end, the dream offered a paradox: a longing for recognition paired with a fear of exposure. There was a fear that the name might be used without permission, that the dream of being invited could collide with the everyday reality of living, of choosing when to speak and when to remain quiet. The scene shifted again, and the phone rang with an unknown number, a sound that jolted the dreamer back from the edge of a forgotten conversation. Sleepwalking through that moment, there was a question about whether the dream would turn into a real event, whether the wish to travel to Frankfurt or to publish a new book could become a waking plan. Then the intrusion of the waking world arrived in a clinical, almost banal way: an advertisement for a telephone company interrupted the reverie, a reminder that some signals are commercial and some are personal. The final contact carried a name that belonged to the dreamer as well as to the day, a soft morning greeting that felt both intimate and distant. The dream lingered, not as a message but as a feeling—a reminder that ambition and identity can intertwine in fluctuating tones, sometimes comforting, sometimes unsettling. When the moment of awakening settled in, it left behind a sense of curiosity about where the line between possibility and reality lay, and a lingering question about how one would respond if another invitation found its way to the doorstep of the mind. In the end, the dream stood as a quiet testimony to a life lived in careful balance between aspiration and self, a reminder that every invitation carries a promise and a risk, and that the way forward often hinges on staying true to who one is when the world is listening. The corporate hush of the morning crept back, and the day began with the ordinary certainty that some dreams are best kept as stories, not schedules, and that the moment to act is always personal and already present beyond sleep. Good morning, Albert, perhaps not a broadcast to the world, but a gentle, human greeting that echoes in the heart just the same.