Netherworld - May 1 2026

 

Netherworld

May 1 2026

I used to think I didn’t dream.

Why, for a man in his prime

to sleep seamlessly

should have made no sense.

Perhaps exhaustion explains it,

stumbling into bed

and falling into deep narcotic sleep,

no inner life left,

no luxury

of self-indulgent contemplation.

So why, now that I’m old

do I remember them,

sometimes so vividly

I awaken in a fever sweat?

Why, when we have settled lives

and have either realized our dreams

or resigned ourselves to disappointment

does the sleeping mind so busy itself?

Is it shallow sleep

or a restless brain,

bored

by the bland day-to-day?

Why does my mind race

between bathroom breaks,

awakening groggily

in the ghostly light of the clock,

rising, often reluctantly, through that liminal state

where blurry consciousness

and that gonzo world intersect;

a place where anything is possible

and nothing quite real.

Where we’re all abstract artists

flicking brushes and throwing paint

at the spattered canvas in our heads.

If only the holy grail of restorative sleep

would somehow come to me. 

But my subversive brain

has its own agenda.

And anyway, my life asleep

often seems more interesting

than the mindless routines that while away my days.

And after all, I have an entire lifetime

on which to ruminate

in the netherworld of night.

In our 2nd childhoods, do we regress,

become babies again

even if more cynical and jaded ones?

Who don’t sleep like the cliché,

but toss and turn

as their minds race,

trying to make sense of a bewildering world,

resolve the flood of sensation

before it swamps their immature brains,

twitchy

with freshly minted newness.

As of yet, I return to the world with little to share,

no insights of consequence

no great revelation.

Just interrupted sleep

that leaves me jet-lagged and questioning.

Trying to knit together

the fragments of dreams,

find my way back

along an unmarked trail

of flashbacks and random thoughts

I struggle to make sense of.

I have started to better remember my dreams the older I get. But I suspect it’s more a result of practice than some change in my brain or stage of life. Although I can only speak for myself. Perhaps others have experienced something similar. (Or, better said, remember more.) Maybe older brains, in general, do dream more.

And perhaps there’s no point in trying to make sense of dreams: that they’re not intended to be meaningful; that they’re just epiphenomena as the brain does its necessary work of consolidating memory and learning, self-repair, and once a day flushing itself of impurities — the waste products of metabolism.

The psychologist Susan Pinker has described babies as the R & D department of life: they aren’t passive lumps we shove food into; they don’t “sleep like babies”. Rather, their brains — with everything to learn, including the fantastic complexity of language —  are constantly churning:  more active than at any other time. So this is one stage of life that, no matter who you are, does require an intense dream life.