compare it to a zoo. we take nature and make it a human zoo. in weak in comparison to dreams the narrator, or protagonist, or dreamer studies animals in cages. at night he dreams himself in a strangely familiar landscape, with burning hills and mountains in the near distance. there are no animals in the pictures of the landscape of his dreams. by day he goes zoo to zoo studying the confined motions of the animals or stopping paralyzed for painful eternities. i worked at the zoo one summer painting cages. the animals watched me paint the cages. the way they looked at me, penetrating my unknown knowingly, disconcerting me, as if i weren't there, but awkwardly there. time rent from eternity, timeless. "a hell of abnormal behavior". i see people walking down the street  looking at their devices through passersby glass-eyed. the protagonist is regarded as a zoo animal expert yet he isn't, he's a protozoa in drinking water expert, and yet he sees the animals' existence like rilke saw the panther pacing, endlessly. the zoo people are pretending it's all normal. normal is pretending.