Yesterday I had a dream. Well, I think it was a dream, because now that I’m trying to write it down, I’m not so sure. Could it be that I truly ventured into the realm of the Master of the Nets ? How strange it is to question the reality of a dream to such an extent.

For Freud, the dream is a way of thinking and personifying the imaginary. For the Epicureans, if the soul grants its agreement, there is no longer any distinction between the true and the false. So, I’m not a princess from the time of the Ming Dynasty, and yet, I am one. I enter this small garden, and it unfolds into vastness. Its paths, corridors and pavilions are inextricably entangled, yet they follow paths that illuminate and guide the mind. Nature is both outside and inside, domesticated and wild, vegetal and mineral, raw and sophisticated. The passage of time is derailed: did I live 1,000 years ago, yesterday, an instant or eternity?

Now I’m awake and pursuing my dreamlike vision. Illusion? No matter, this garden is now part of me, I have trapped it in the labyrinth of my dreams.

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Work commissioned by the Garden of the Master of Nets in Suzhou