I don’t know whether the collection of sounds and images in my mind last night should be termed a dream or a nightmare, so I’ll refer to the experience as a drightmare:
I was in my hometown, Morristown – at night – in the ‘seedy’ part of town. There once existed a piano shop to the left of me, in reality, but in this drightmare, the music was coming from a bar-restaurant where the vampire once drew blood for money, across the street. I was running up a hill, which is not extraordinarily steep in reality; nevertheless, I felt my body giving in to its incline. All of the cars – and there were many – stopped and watched me, as if I was a faltering clown, suffering for their viewing pleasure. I couldn’t see any of the drivers’ faces, but I could hear the music of a double bass and a piano.
That’s it; I heard music as I struggled to climb a hill, at night. It isn’t supposed to make sense; nothing makes sense. Humans formulate reasons to explain the events of life, but reasons are replaced by alternate reasons. I can invent countless reasons to explain this drightmare, employing symbols or what I know of psychoanalytic tools, but I will not. The point is that this drightmare left me feeling queasy and anxious, like a failure.
Make the pain go away! Why do I crave the things that hurt me? I know better. Reconciliation with the death-of-self would, in an instant, dissolve this shallow agony. Later the agony would morph, magnify, and multiply inside. I am addicted to pain – let it go.
