Dreams/Life

Dreams are the other zone of consciousness. They are the world of swaying weeds and skirting minnows navigating the bottle-green, particle-filigreed world beneath the surface of a pond. Or dreams are the reflection of the sky beaming forth from the surface of the pond, toward the convex lenses of your eyes. Clouds vaguely shifting, resonant blue hues hovering about. To live without dreams or the memory of dreams is like trying to play soccer without a ball. We run about, making all the moves and gestures, but can't properly play the game. I should know. I lived without dreams or without the memory of them for over three years. I would lay down on my mattress at night, quickly sink into unconsciousness, and the next thing I knew, I was waking up and getting ready to make coffee. The hours between the fall into sleep and awakening were as lost or removed - time eaten up by some force and vanished.

My partner has a rich dream life. Morning after morning, she tells me about the fantastical and often unsettling adventures she experiences while asleep. Her dreams can sound like scenes from a Tim Burton film and quite often they appear to be a series of visual representations of powerful emotions from her waking, conscious life. The dreams she shares with me also seem to be depictions of long-term projects of transformation she is pursuing. Invariably, when she recounts her dreams to me I am struck by their vividness and importance of message. It is as if her unconscious is saying, "Hey. You know that stuff that feels confusing and overwhelming while you are awake? Well, this is what's going on. But you will have to take it in with the wacky and jarring dream language that we employ. Once you fall asleep, it's our house and this is how we communicate here."

Somewhere along the way, I seem to have developed a decent capacity for interpreting the language of dreams - probably the result of years of therapy, of studying poetry and of just talking to people about their dreams. While exploring the metaphors and visual reveries of poetry and song lyrics has helped with understanding the symbolism of dreams, something I learned from a great therapist who practices in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago was to always ask myself: “How did you feel while that was happening in the dream?” The imagery and the emotion felt – taken together - can offer information essential to us as we navigate life and seek to persevere, to grow, to love and to create.

Until 2017, I too, had benefited from a somewhat active dream life. Though I did not remember dreams as frequently as my partner, I received certain dreams that depicted knotty emotional struggles I was waging with such striking and eloquent visual language that I consider them crucial to the person I am today. However, in September 2017, a pharmaceutical and herbal medication SNAFU provoked two horrific episodes of serotonin syndrome which, in turn, set into motion my abrupt cessation of the SSRI Lexapro which I had been taking for 12 years for (occasionally crippling) OCD. The two bouts of serotonin syndrome were more physically and psychically violent than anything I’d experienced in 50 years of living. The abrupt cessation of the SSRI was done in an attempt to avoid another serotonin syndrome, but the consequences of that cessation were devastating. In addition to the major depressive disorder that was activated, I ceased having any dreams that I could I remember. The major depressive order persisted for a year and required hospitalization to resolve. But as I came back to wellness and even thriving, my dreams did not return. The blank journey through no-time continued each night... until the last week or two.

The recovery capacities of the mind and of our bodies, more generally, should not be underestimated. This has been made clear to me in multiple ways. Among these are my ability to return to some guitar and some songwriting after more than twenty years sidelined with chronic tendinitis and my regaining the ability to smile and laugh after those seemed to be permanently extinguished while I was depressed. And now, I feel my old friend, the dream, coming back to keep me company as I sleep. And what is playing at the dream cinema as the projector flickers back to life? Well, a couple of dreams which are right up to date - current - so to speak. These are anxiety dreams wherein I find myself among a crowd of friends laughing, having a good time and suddenly I realize that neither I nor any of my friends are wearing a mask. I am filled with panic, regret and dread. This dream is the replaying of a similar experience I had in real life a couple of months ago. It was one of the very few times I’ve spent with a group of friends in the last year. We were enjoying each other’s company and what we were working on and we forgot ourselves a couple of times. I white knuckled it through ten days after that hang out, hoping desperately not to experience any Covid symptoms. Mercifully, I did not.

Another dream I’ve had since that particular cinema has apparently reopened is one from the sublime/transcendent dream category. My friend Sean, who I haven’t seen in 27 years, was strumming chords on something that looked like the combination of a guitar and an autoharp and that was played upright. The music was very beautiful. The harmonies ringing from the chords had an ineffable quality. They sounded the way honey tastes or the way a row of candles appears: multivalent, familiar but not completely so. That music I heard and who was playing it and where he was playing it – in a small room with supportive friends half-circled around him – have provided me with fuel, strength and energy in the days since. And for that I am very grateful!