I am familiar with the sounds a house makes as it cools down for the night. The occasional pop of a window letting in air does not waken me, nor does the creaking of old wooden steps. These are the sounds of home and night, letting me settle into sleep.

     Here in Hanoi, the nighttime brings with it no cooling relief. Here in Hanoi, the houses prematurely age from rain and sun. No edifice stands still long enough to settle down. The house is too hot and I am unsettled. The silence jars me into disquiet.

     One night I heard something. I was lying in bed, trying to sleep. I tried counting numbers. Backward and forward I counted, numbers spinning through my head until I saw them before my eyes like a roulette wheel. It was then that I heard a clicking sound. At first I thought it was occurring in my head to accompany the spinning numbers of my mind. Was this the beginning of a dream? Then I heard the clicking again. Louder. Closer. Too close. With a start, my eyes snapped open and came to focus in the dim light on a lizard, sitting on my pillow. The gecko cocked its head at me, as if to attract my attention.

     "Hello," it said, in a voice that was squeaky but soft.

      "Now I must be dreaming," I thought. He was a pretty large gecko. His tail extended all the way off my pillow and out of sight. He clicked his tongue at me again. His mouth opened.

     "Hello," he said, this time a little more clearly.

     "Are you speaking to me?" I asked in disbelief.

     "No one else is here."

     "What are you doing here?"
     "I'm a gecko. I eat bugs. I run around on walls. Sometimes I make noises. It's not a very fulfilling life. I thought I'd make a change."

     "A change?"

     "You're human; you must have a pretty interesting life. I'd like to hear about it before I try it."

     "Try it? How can you try it?" I asked. "You're not a person."

     "Are you a Buddhist?" the creature asked me.

     "No." I answered.

     "You mean not yet," he responded.

     "Why not yet?"

     "You will be when you're a gecko. All geckos are Buddhists. It's because we all want to believe that we'll get another life after this one. I think I was a human before. Someday you'll be a gecko. Maybe you already have been. You'll be a Buddhist then."

     "Why do you want another life?" I asked him.

     "So that someday I can have a life that means something." He answered.

     The gecko swept his tail across my pillow, brushing it against my cheek. It was cold and dry. "You don't believe in reincarnation," he said. "What do you believe?"

     "I don't know."

     "How can you not know what you believe?" His tail flickered almost angrily. "That's like saying you don't know who you are. Do you believe in God?"

     "Not really. No."

     "Why not? Don't you think you were created for some reason?"

     "I don't know what to think."

     "Do you know what I think?" he asked.

     "No."

     "I think that you were created for a reason. Maybe geckos and bugs and trees and creatures like us weren't, but you're smart. You humans can figure things out, decide between right and wrong."

     "So?" I asked. "Just because people are more intelligent than

     lizards or bugs doesn't mean that we're any more important than them. If there's no purpose to life, then nothing we do has any use."

     "But what if there is a purpose?"

     "What is it? Is it some God from some mountaintop telling us how to be moral? If there is some absolute right or wrong, what are the consequences if we disobey?"

     "There are no consequences, if you mean punishment." the reptile replied.

     "Well then," I said. "There might as well be no meaning to it."

     "On the other hand,"

     "Yes?"

     "On the other hand, if no one has given you some purpose, then you have the ability to create one."

     "Create one?"

     "Sure. I'm a gecko. I have no choice but to eat bugs, scamper around on walls, and try not to get eaten. I can't really do much else. But you can do all sorts of things. So you can give yourself a purpose of your own and live for it. You have the freedom to create your own meaning in life."

     "But that's useless. That's the excuse people use to do whatever they want. To become hedonists or sadists. That's no way to live. It would be much nicer if someone could tell you what to do. Even if I was just supposed to eat bugs and climb walls, at least I would know that it was right."

     "Ah. So I see you are a Buddhist now."

     "How am I a Buddhist?"

     "You wish to be reincarnated as a gecko."

     "That was just a metaphor."

     "No it isn't. The best we can hope for is to be good at being geckos, do the best within our limits. It's like being at the top of a small, closed box. But you have no limits; your box is open. You can constantly aspire to further greatness."

     "But if there is no limit, if there's an infinite greatness to overcome, then we are infinitely farther from the top."

     "But you may always climb higher.

     "I think I would rather be in the closed box."

     "As I said before," the lizard commented dryly, "you wish to become a gecko. I wish to become a human. Perhaps some day we will both get our wish."

     "Then perhaps we will have this conversation again."

     "I hope not," the gecko said. "For contented geckos don't need to speak to humans. And aspiring people create their dreams instead of using them to excuse reality."

     With that last word, the gecko fell silent, scampered around the pillow momentarily, and leapt off the bed. I fell asleep.

     The next morning I awoke, trying to recall the peculiar dream of the previous night. As I got up, I noticed a long green tail on my pillow. It was bent and damaged, as it must have been nearly crushed in my sleep. I picked it up and examined the sheets; fortunately it had left no mark.