Sunday Morning Coffee (or) Another Morning Untroubled by Existential Angst
An uncharacteristically productive Sunday - rose early, made a pot of coffee and got my laundry dry and folded. I think that's the first time in years that a load of laundry I've done has had a twelve-hour half-life.
Outside it's snowing - thick, white, and wet. My balcony rail and the telephone wire outside my window are wearing 3" peaked roofs of white, and still the snow is falling thick and relentless, like something trying to blot out sound, like something trying to cover tracks. The snow looks deliberate, determined, unromantic. It's on its way to the office, commuting with desperate intensity from the clouds to the frigid sidewalk below. I can hear the click of briefcases in my mind as I look out the window at the businessweather.
Last night was wonderful. Adam and I happened into some tickets to The Seagull at American Repertory Theatre and then happened into a bar with a decent selection of single-malt Scotches. After three hours of Chekhov and two fingers of the Balvenie, I was feeling pretty self-satisfied indeed.
I fell asleep quickly and slept deeply - those of you who know me well know that I have little enough trouble sleeping, once I can actually persuade myself to get into bed. It's more like anti-somnia than insomnia. But then, this morning, I dreamt. Again.
I'm not used to dreaming - or at least not used to remembering my dreams. When I do have a dream of any length, it usually follows a predictable pattern: I'm male, though still myself. I face some sort of fantasy or science-fiction danger - dragon, nuclear apocalypse, nameless evil - in order to save a love interest or a group of my friends. I triumph. I wake up.
Sometimes, of course, I do have those dreams everyone has - I'm falling, I have to give a presentation - but I'm naked!, I'm acting in a play and I don't know my lines, my Mom and I ride a bus to the zoo... whatever random strange detritus or anxiety my brain decides to process in psychologically predictable ways.
Recently, though, I've had a different crop of dreams entirely. They started along with 2009 - on January first, in fact, when I lay down to take a nap and then dreamed that I had one sock on and one sock off. The dream was, in fact, untrue - I had both socks on. Ordinary as it sounds, it was peculiarly disturbing. I've always had very sensitive feet, and I hate being able to feel an irregularity in my sock or shoe - and this dream was like the Platonic essence of one-sock-on-and-one-sock-off - incredibly, unbearably, unremittingly uncomfortable. I woke up in a cold sweat and the dream haunted me for the rest of the day. I kept looking nervously down at my socks as I padded around a friend's house for the entirety of my lazy New Year's celebration.
Throughout this month I've had other dreams in the same vein - dreams about usual circumstances, often very brief, but surrounded by a feeling of nameless dread and horror. In my dreams, I'm having a conversation with a friend, or making coffee, or standing in line at the grocery store - but the entire time I am aware that this is horribly, horribly wrong - I'm sort of half-aware of the "dream-as-dream" and deeply unnerved, even in my dreaming state, becuase I never have dreams like this.
And then last week happened - last week, the dreams started rifling around in my subconscious, opening out drawers - mixing in memories, fears, conversations I almost had or wish I'd had or keep meaning to have. To you, my faithful readers who have made it this far, I ask - what gives? Why should I, an ordinary-enough person who enjoys a somewhat functional - or at least stringently well-disciplined - inner life, be experiencing this? I find it unfair, unwelcome, and frankly, stupid.
I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not for that I have bad dreams...
Any thoughts on how to stop Hamlet-ing? (Killing Laertes being removed as on option here).
Outside it's snowing - thick, white, and wet. My balcony rail and the telephone wire outside my window are wearing 3" peaked roofs of white, and still the snow is falling thick and relentless, like something trying to blot out sound, like something trying to cover tracks. The snow looks deliberate, determined, unromantic. It's on its way to the office, commuting with desperate intensity from the clouds to the frigid sidewalk below. I can hear the click of briefcases in my mind as I look out the window at the businessweather.
Last night was wonderful. Adam and I happened into some tickets to The Seagull at American Repertory Theatre and then happened into a bar with a decent selection of single-malt Scotches. After three hours of Chekhov and two fingers of the Balvenie, I was feeling pretty self-satisfied indeed.
I fell asleep quickly and slept deeply - those of you who know me well know that I have little enough trouble sleeping, once I can actually persuade myself to get into bed. It's more like anti-somnia than insomnia. But then, this morning, I dreamt. Again.
I'm not used to dreaming - or at least not used to remembering my dreams. When I do have a dream of any length, it usually follows a predictable pattern: I'm male, though still myself. I face some sort of fantasy or science-fiction danger - dragon, nuclear apocalypse, nameless evil - in order to save a love interest or a group of my friends. I triumph. I wake up.
Sometimes, of course, I do have those dreams everyone has - I'm falling, I have to give a presentation - but I'm naked!, I'm acting in a play and I don't know my lines, my Mom and I ride a bus to the zoo... whatever random strange detritus or anxiety my brain decides to process in psychologically predictable ways.
Recently, though, I've had a different crop of dreams entirely. They started along with 2009 - on January first, in fact, when I lay down to take a nap and then dreamed that I had one sock on and one sock off. The dream was, in fact, untrue - I had both socks on. Ordinary as it sounds, it was peculiarly disturbing. I've always had very sensitive feet, and I hate being able to feel an irregularity in my sock or shoe - and this dream was like the Platonic essence of one-sock-on-and-one-sock-off - incredibly, unbearably, unremittingly uncomfortable. I woke up in a cold sweat and the dream haunted me for the rest of the day. I kept looking nervously down at my socks as I padded around a friend's house for the entirety of my lazy New Year's celebration.
Throughout this month I've had other dreams in the same vein - dreams about usual circumstances, often very brief, but surrounded by a feeling of nameless dread and horror. In my dreams, I'm having a conversation with a friend, or making coffee, or standing in line at the grocery store - but the entire time I am aware that this is horribly, horribly wrong - I'm sort of half-aware of the "dream-as-dream" and deeply unnerved, even in my dreaming state, becuase I never have dreams like this.
And then last week happened - last week, the dreams started rifling around in my subconscious, opening out drawers - mixing in memories, fears, conversations I almost had or wish I'd had or keep meaning to have. To you, my faithful readers who have made it this far, I ask - what gives? Why should I, an ordinary-enough person who enjoys a somewhat functional - or at least stringently well-disciplined - inner life, be experiencing this? I find it unfair, unwelcome, and frankly, stupid.
I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not for that I have bad dreams...
Any thoughts on how to stop Hamlet-ing? (Killing Laertes being removed as on option here).