Netherworld
May 1 2026
I used to think I didn’t dream.
Why a man in his prime
would sleep seamlessly
should have made no sense.
Perhaps exhaustion explains it,
stumbling into bed
and falling into a deep narcotic sleep,
no inner life left,
no energy
for self-indulgent contemplation.
So why, now that I’m old
do I remember my dreams,
sometimes so vividly
I bolt up 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 everyday?
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;
where anything is possible
and nothing quite real.
Where we’re all making art,
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 brain has its own agenda,
and anyway, my life asleep
often seems more interesting
than the mindless day-to-day.
And after all
I have a life
already mostly lived
on which to ruminate
in night’s unnerving netherworld.
In our 2nd childhoods, do we regress,
become babies again
even if more cynical and jaded?
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 an immature brain,
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment