Every night before I go to sleep, I give my subconscious a suggestion. I’ll have a restful sleep and wake up in a positive mood. And I will dream and remember it. My fulminating subconscious is free to chose what it creates. Or, to create anything at all.
I had this dream a couple of days ago.
I drive to a a distant part of my city. It is an amalgam off many of the cities and towns I have lived in. Familiar but odd. I know my destination. But I hadn’t been there in decades. Time has transformed everything and nothing looks quite the same. Ghosts of the past hidden amongst the modern present and the construction detours of the future. I become frustrated, uneasy.
I find the street I am looking for. A stretch of two and three story businesses. built in the 1910s as the city had grown outwards. Once a vibrant suburb center for a suburb it transformed over time. In the 1970s the area had been revitalized with the old buildings given a good cleaning and fresh paint. But, now, this fondly remembered place is aging, wearing out.
Once, the side streets were lined by prosperous middle-class homes and manicured lawns. Now nondescript businesses have sprouted. Amongst the blank facades a checkerboard of threadbare yards with ragged bushes and sagging trees dot the neighborhood. The place is weary.
I leave Main Street looking for parking. There wasn’t any. Parked cars line the streets for blocks. Some houses have become asphalt lots with restricted parking. Detours resulting from construction and street repairs turn the once ordered streets into a maze. Directing me further and further from Main Street.
Time reflects the confusion I’m experiencing. Dream time is fluid and, like my subconscious, unruly, chaotic. At the start it was a mild summer mid-morning with an half-hour drive ahead. But when I’m parking, it is muggy late afternoon, an orange sun is setting behind urban silhouettes. I’m several blocks from my goal. As I start to walk, evening and then night rapidly set in, quickly, unnaturally. The forlorn streets became menacing. Street lamps came on, their sodium bulbs cast narrow cones of sulfurous light down into the dusty darkness.
I begin meeting people. First solitary walkers who avoid me as we approach. I become apprehensive and soon doing the same. I cross to the other side of the street. Main Street is lost but its glow above the shadows directs me.
As I head forward I become more disoriented. It seems that I am always just a couple blocks away but, it seems much further. More strangers appear, coming and going from shadowy houses and parking lots. Faint yellow light drifts from screened windows, open to let breezes remove the day’s stale air and heat. Here and there, figures sit on porches and steps, cooling off, talking quietly. They watch me walk by with slightly averted eyes. Not following me, but following me.
As I walk, people begin to approach me. Tentatively at first, then more directly as the street grows brighter. They appear disturbed, showing signs of emotional stress and, often, physical fragmentation. This frightens me. I feel threatened.
I try to avoid them but contact is inevitable. My first impression is being confronted by anxious, demanding people, creating bursts of emotional interference. They crowd my inner and outer space. I slowly become accustomed to this jarring reality I begin to hear what they are saying. I hear offers to help me find where I am go. I see awkward gestures to help.
These people are damaged. In their eyes I see vulnerable souls, desperate children reaching out from within a storm of doubt, fear, isolation, and loneliness. I attempt to treat them with respect and patience as I let them lead me through a shifting maze. Dark hallways, echoing chambers, and mind boggling collisions of architectures and decorations. Sometimes indoors and then out, under an ever changing night sky. Always the glow of the lights of my destination are just beyond the buildings that surround me.
When I look through windows or distant doorways and clearly see where I want to go. But I never get there. I begin to try to escape from my guides. They genuinely, desperately want to help. I realize they are desperate for company, for recognition and human warmth. They are saturated with a sadness distilled from years of abuse and neglect, of guilt and hopelessness. I feel my empathy growing and a sadness of my own.
But, I have a destination and purpose that I can no longer remember. I begin trying to escape their emotional clinging to me. I’m losings myself in their chaos.
My new plan is to call my wife and have her come and rescue me. She will return me to the orderly loving world I’d just come from. I had lost my phone in the mayhem and began to frantically look for another, public or cell. By my mind is crumbling, my memory evaporating. I am becoming unfocused, hopeless.
The rest of my dream is of dashing from one place to another. My plan to call my wife turns into fog, intangible. I realize that I have no way to tell her how to find me. I want to call her and tell her I love her. I didn’t think I’m going make it home.
I wake up, laying in my warm bed. Distinct memories rerun behind my eyelids. Understanding is building. As I fix my cat’s breakfast and my coffee I feel like I’ve experienced something what we all are going through.
As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, I believe that each of us lives in our own unique universe and that we together, inhabit a shared multiverse of experiences. Everything I know is filtered through my physical self and interpreted using my imperfect recollections of the past. All of us are like that. We have similar but not exactly alike human experiences.
My dream is about me. It is about how the world looks to me. Everyone in it is my projection of myself onto to figures I’ve created to represent the people I observe in our shared experiences. I can only imagine what others are going through using my experiences, my history.
Our world is transforming. We try to remember the past, look through the devastation of the present, towards an uncertain future. In the process we risk losing our humanity. We are isolated. We struggle to reach out to others, to connect and build a coherent existence. Yet, the destruction and cruelty we are involved drives us deeper within ourselves. We attempt to comprehend what is going on and protect ourselves. This can further weaken our human connections. We are less able to reach out to others that need our love and caring.
We hug ourselves more tightly and can not reach out a helping hand.
My wife died 0ver 12 years ago. In my dream, I sought her presence and her warmth. I looked for her comfort in the dead past. I felt its promise in the presence.
I seems to me that if we are to survive these cruel times and keep our humanity alive we need to come to terms with the fear and confusion in our minds. We need to embrace those shadow figures in our minds and embrace, comfort them. We can become stronger. We can become more self-directed. We can rebuild our Main Streets by reaching out to each other knowing that they too have shadows and need acknowledgement and comfort.
About The Photograph
Homelessness was implied in my dream. When I was about 25, I took a photo of an older man sheltering from the cold winter rain. He was sitting in a covered alley. Lost in his thoughts. To me he seemed to be enduring. I wondered what was thinking. He changed my life. I thought of my life and what it would be to loose everything. It’s been a permanent shadow in my memory, homelessness and being adrift in a indifferent world. Today, I remember that cold wet day and that man lost in his thoughts.