The Current of Dream
My dreams lately have a tremendous current. I feel this current with my whole body, as if I were submerged in a river flowing very fast from out of the dark. Many of these dreams are of impossible Zelda-style landscapes, crowded with junk and old friends, and lasting 3, 5, 7 hours. I can sleep through the night, given the right spell, but insomnia is always a threat. Nothing destroys dreams—and sleep—more than alcohol; alcohol replaces my dreams with the blackout sleep of the damned (drinking as resistance to dream?). Dreams have always been clairvoyant—a sign from beyond—for to be shown a dream is to be shown it: das andere psychische—the other psychical thing in you. This alien force that flows in and through the dream, advancing its action, pulling image upon image up from the night; a whole twilit underworld, where the dead live—and from which all the gods were born. Even during my waking hours I can feel the draw of this current on my body, as if only the floor or chair prevented me from falling, like Alice, into a chasm of dream. The active portion of falling asleep is a ritual surrounding a non-action; I prepare myself to do nothing but surrender to hypnagogia; DMT cartoons spiraling at the edge of thought—the gravity-well of dream reaching into the waking mind—the feeling of melting and of falling; a short fall to melt into the nocturnal power rising up to take my body away from the sensible world. It is a very old power, this serpentine peristalsis of archaic night. It is older than language. The streaming current continues its pull on me as I wake up to the rude alarm, but I do not want to wake up, I want to remain there in that giant and cozy euphoria, coursing in me like how I imagine heroin to feel in Ewan McGregor, pulling him down into the red carpet.
