Lost and Found

I don’t sleep all that much. When I do, it’s usually a slate-clearing state of blankness, a pure mental reboot. Thus, remembering a dream is rare for me, as it takes high-impact imagery to fray the blanket of recharging neurons. The happy dreams are always different. They’re shiny, sweetly varied combinations of sex, food, and warm laughter. But, my nightmares are always, always the same. Their pattern started in early childhood and remains consistent to this day. Up to and including last night, in fact.

I’m hopelessly lost, but in a hauntingly familiar place. It’s usually my old neighborhood in New York City. Bleecker Street, Washington Square Park, Seventh Street and Avenue D, where we used to go cop dime bags of smoky rebellion. Alternatively, it’s wherever I’m living or working at the time, an impossibly sunny Berkeley or a foggy, ominous San Francisco. Regardless, it’s always my territory, but I can never find anything. Addresses are visibly incorrect. Landmarks are in the wrong places. The usual touchstones and scent trails jump and switch.

I know where I am, but things aren’t where they’re supposed to be. I’m always running - chasing or, more frequently, being chased. Either something precious has been taken from me or I am the sweaty, desperate thief on the lam. There’s never anywhere to hide. Worse yet, the good hiding places used to be right there. No, really, right there! Now gone and I’m exposed. With no refuge and no one to protect me, I am captured. It’s only rarely the police who apprehend me, though.

I’m usually running from someone I know or a grotesque manifestation thereof which I immediately recognize as a particular person. Clearly, it’s not a happy reunion. We fight and I inevitably lose. As final defeat becomes imminent, I wake myself up, just in time to keep them from killing me. To my bedmate’s dismay, it’s often a screaming struggle to break the spell.

It’s always at least a jolt, a swift intake of heavy breath which reminds my lungs they not only exist, they still function. This shock of gas exchange has allowed me to envision exactly how I’m going to someday die. One day, they’ll catch me and they’ll kill me. I won’t be able to break the death grip. I won’t be able to wake up. My sputtering network of alveoli will no longer trade carbon dioxide for oxygen. And that’ll be it.