Artwork by Michael DiMilo
By Geoff Carter
Lately, my wife and I have gotten in the habit of letting the TV lull us to sleep. We sit on the couch, mesmerized, almost stoned by the monotony of late-night television, until we finally start dozing off. I’ll make my way up to bed about eleven o’clock, but she invariably stays on the couch longer than me. I don’t take it personally.
It’s never easy to get out of a warm bed, particularly in the winter. It’s chilly, the floor is frigid, and the bathroom is clammy. The windows are coated with swirls of frost. The cold begins to seep into the soles of your feet as soon as you crawl out from under the quilt and touch the hardwood floor.
When years have gathered on you—as lichens grow on stone—the cold stays in your bones longer—even after you crawl under the covers. You shiver during the long moments it takes your skin to heat the sheets, and then later, in the morning, rising becomes even more difficult when you remember how long it took your bones—especially the long bones—to get warmed up.
During the long winter nights, lost in the cradle of long dark slumber punctuated by sepia-toned dreams that seem to contain less color, less energy, and fewer surprises than the dreams of your youth, sleep becomes a library of memories, a friendly harbor for ghosts, and the occasional way station for desire.
You might reach out involuntarily from the velvet tendrils of sleep and touch your partner—also lost in the banked warmth. She might react to the touch, or she might not. Your fingers may ignite a memory or rouse a ghost from deep in the subconscious before it becomes transposed into the rebus of dreams. Or not. Or a touch may carry the faint spark of desire. In this state, it’s impossible to tell whether you might be touching a body, fondling a dream, or caressing a ghost.
I think of sleep more often during my waking hours than I ever have. When I was younger, I only used to think of going to bed when I had to, when I was told to as a child, or when I was too tired to stay awake. Now sleep is not just a necessity, it is a guilty pleasure. I enjoy drifting off. My body is older, more worn, and works harder to renew itself. Except perhaps when I was a very young child, sleep seems more natural than it ever has before. I like it.
I don’t think desiring sleep is necessarily a symptom. I believe it’s a natural process, partly biological and partly rejuvenative—physically and spiritually. It’s also the connective tissue between our present and past, (actual and desired past), the link between the harsh reality of age and the thoughtless vivacity of youth, memory, and hope. In sleep, we might dream of things that actually happened, things that could happen, or things that should have happened. We dream of old friends and of those who are no longer with us. All these possibilities wind up under the covers and draw from all the layers of our experience.
I’ve been having a recurring dream over the past few months. It’s not the people or situations that repeat, it’s the location. I’m on my way to our place in the Northwoods when suddenly, inexplicably, the route now curves around a large desolate body of water (existing only in the dream) and I end up passing through a small town. I find myself stopped at a tiny wooden bar, something out of Deliverance, and then, after a bit of doing something (but I can never remember what), I leave. I only vaguely recall the people—only that they’re almost never there, except that one is my old friend Dave, who passed away a few years ago. We never speak.
I had another dream the other night where I was at my first day of college, meeting my roommates in the dorm. None of them noticed I was old. One of them started talking about “shooting the pipe”. When I asked what that meant, they all laughed and said it meant skateboarding. I was mortified. Interestingly enough, “shooting the pipe” has nothing to do with boarding. My mind was playing tricks on me, but I think the dream was about a wish to be young again—just because it’s so beautiful.
When you’re eighteen, anything is plausible—and all good things seem probable. That undying and witless optimism isn’t a fault; it’s almost a right. Hope, aspiration, and ambition seem like inevitabilities or fate; it’s not a matter of if they will happen, it’s when; it’s a time when everyone—for no particular reason—feels special. And the rest is all the energy and time in the world.
But at a certain age, we become aware that time is a limited commodity. A writing teacher once told me when a typical reader reaches sixty, they move from self-help books to books on spirituality—Cliff Notes for the afterlife. At a certain point, the body knows what the mind might choose to ignore, so it decides to sleep more, to do the deep psychic dives to inform our conscious selves of this—whether they want it or not.
Mick Jagger has gone on tour with the Rolling Stones again. He’s seventy-nine years old. Paul McCartney is eighty. Jeff Beck, Christine McVie, Dave Bowie and other icons of boomer youth passed away recently. Relics of our youth are evaporating all around us. Most millennials couldn’t tell you who John Wayne or Jack Kerouac or Wavy Gravy are—or were. They’re just names in history books or faded black and white photos on an obscure webpage. But to boomers, they’re still the spine of our culture, the essence of our youth.
In the caverns of our sleep, we might dredge up faded memories of lovers past or places barely remembered. We might dream about a Who concert we once attended or a place we never heard of. We might have a shootout with the Duke. Sleep is a place where being young again is more than a memory; it’s a near reality. It’s a place where our present and younger selves can negotiate and—maybe—commiserate. Our youths never do really disappear. Bodies age, but our personalities don’t. Generally, we still like what we liked as young people and want to do what used to love. Desire doesn’t go anywhere. Humor doesn’t leave. Sleep helps us reconnect to ourselves, to relearn ourselves.
Aches and pains, disappointments and regret don’t disappear as we sleep. They are absorbed, mixed into the casserole of our existence. Others might define us by our outer realities, our dress, mannerisms, and deeds, but we define ourselves through our deeds, thoughts, and desires, and these inner qualities are redefined and translated during our sleep.
Sleep is a harbor, sleep is a temple, and sleep is conversation with ourselves, our best and most intimate of friends. It is the refuge and sanctuary of our past and future selves.