A Pilgrim’s Digression

I slept poorly last night, which is about par for the course. I turned out the light about eleven. I felt comfortable: the air conditioner was pumping out frigid air; I was covered with two blankets; I felt extremely tired—in fact, I’d nodded off on the bus ride home from work earlier in the evening. I expected a good sleep for a change.

I could not fall deeply asleep, however. Just as I’d begin to drift, I’d hear the sharp crack of balls on a pool table as someone made the break. The sound was a hallucination, but it sounded so real I would wake up with my heart pounding. Back to sleep: then CRACK! I felt a bit like Rip van Winkle, though instead of ghostly bowlers, I had ghostly pool players in my bedroom.

It did not help that before turning out the light, I had been listening to my iPod. After the crack of the balls had awakened me, and as I’d settle down again into my pillows, in my head was the refrain from the last song I had heard before turning out the light: “A hard rain’s a gonna fall.” Bob Dylan.

This went on until about three AM, the last time I looked at the clock. I finally slept for about two hours before the alarm went off. And I had a nightmare, an old one that I haven’t had probably since I was a teenager. I had the drowning dream.

I may have related here previously that when I was a kid, my parents were lax about what I watched on television. My favorite movies included the Friday the Thirteenth series and Halloween. Of the former, the two scenes that always disturbed me the most were the scenes in Crystal Lake. The scene in which the boy, Jason, drowns while the camp counselors screw terrified me, as did the scene at the end when a maggot-infested Jason leaps out of the lake to drag down the sole survivor of the previous night’s horrors.

Drowning has always been particularly terrifying to me. I do not have a phobia, since I can go swimming in lakes and rivers without my fear overwhelming me. But when I think of all the horrible ways to die, drowning is by far the worst. For this reason, too, I like to read tales of sea disasters and watch documentaries about sea disasters on the History Channel. Such stories of death by drowning titillate the part of me that is most afraid of such a death.

In my drowning dream, I am always on the lake where we fish in Canada. I am in the lake, no boat or flotation device, and no one to hear my calls for help. Usually, I am at a place on the lake called Devil’s Cove, where rock cliffs rise high above the lake and there is no shore to climb out on. Pine trees hang from the cliff, overshadowing the water. In my dream, night is gathering when I go under for the last time. Green water surrounds me as I drift down; the water grows colder and colder.

The alarm went off at about four-fifty AM, ending the dream abruptly though I know how it ends from former experience. I die. My journey to the Underworld is through water, which now fills my lungs in place of air. My guide is a woman in white with long, dark hair that swirls around her in the brackish, cold water. She walks through the water and I follow, both of us being ghosts. From the water, we pass into white light and I am back in the world again, a ghost. I watch as my fish-eaten body is dragged from the lake. I spend years watching as my family go about their lives, gradually forgetting about me. New to the dream, my wife and son join in the forgetting. All trace of me eventually disappears from the world. Possessions are thrown out, clothes donated, writings dumped unceremoniously in the garbage. Eventually, I pass out of people’s conversation as well and then out of their mind. And then I am truly and finally a ghost.

On the ride to work this morning, I felt drugged and dull. My head ached. I had no energy to climb the escalators at the Metro stations. I could have used another five hours sleep. Usually, I read on the bus and train (I’ve been reading Dhalgren). Today, I skipped it, opting instead to alternately stare stupidly at nothing and doze.

I looked at people who stepped onto the train at each stop. Perhaps it is impolite, but I am fascinated by this transitory connection with others. Sometimes I see the same people every day, because people are creatures of habit and we tend to stand in the same place on the train platform and thus ride in the same train car every day. I sometimes think, “What if I were to speak?” But I don’t speak.

The lines from the Beatles song, “Eleanor Rigby” ran on a tape loop through my head.

Look at all the lovely people
Ah look at all the lovely people…

Eleanor Rigby died in the church
and was buried along with her name
Nobody came
Father McKenzie wiping the dirt from his hands
as he walks from the grave
No one was saved

Lovely people, lovely people, ah look at them…

Coffee at Starbucks today. Breakfast Blend. I begin to feel a little better. I am almost able to forget the dream, until I begin to write that I slept poorly last night.