There’s a brief space of time just before sleep where dreams seep through the gates of consciousness. It isn’t fully a dream, because I know how I got there, and am capable—if compelled—of escaping. But I am often weary, and willing to just watch as sleep submerges my waking mind...
What I see I cannot say, it depends on the day. On certain nights I spend my final hours playing countless games of online chess. The games are fast (Blitz—5 minutes allotted to each player) and I slowly feel the sharpness of my mind begin to dull. I commit the most elementary mistakes: hung rooks, knights, and flagrant miscalculations. My mind loses its ability of symmetrical perception: the white and black squares seemingly slide and slice against one another, killing my sense of direction (white or black, I cannot tell which way is forward).
Soon after this I resign almost in rapture to my bed. I close my eyes and a feeling of exhaustion washes over me—not unlike usual sorts of exhaustion, when the mind blissfully exhales, when even the insomniac can descend into slumber with lithe ease. But my nights of chess have an added peculiarity.
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Mikhail Tal, a legendary Grandmaster, spoke of the tree of chess variations. When considering a move, it is crucial to not be stunned by the possibilities opened and closed by each decision. One sees blaring (and usually false) ghosts of demise eight moves away, or futile combinations and endgames. Each move, or branch, leads to eight others, and them to eight more. And as I am resigned in my bed, my mind similarly exhales variations of past games, but with the difference of myself not really being cognisant of them all. I am in a room with a thousand screens. My mind is the room, but I do not control it, I am simply a weary spectator, drifting from game to game. At odd times I can grab onto a branch and play fragments of games, consciously appreciative of singular moves. But for the most part the screens and moves multiply so quickly that I can only watch in wonder.
This phenomenon is even more spectacular when it comes to labyrinthine literature. After long hours combing through portions of Ulysses, after I have given up trying to understand every passage and resign to gage the rhythms of his sentences, I lie in bed not knowing exactly what I’ve read, where I’ve been, or to be honest, who I am. It’s common to read whole sections of Ulysses, extract adequate compensation, but still feel as if much was left beneath the surface. Perhaps more than anyone else, Joyce’s dense and variable writing style lends well to subconscious productivity, and as I lie in bed his scattered words streak across my minds sky...
Moments pass and I hone in on a sentence—I must have grazed it while gaging his rhythms. It turns subversive. The under-weave (the words behind his words—mine or his) bursts at the seams as beautiful but barely coherent passages rush forth. I follow the sentences as they transmute through sections of story. I am in awe that this is my mind and these are (partially) my creations. I rarely understand them but they emanate a sense of pure joy and honesty, unbarred by subtlety, brevity or grammar—essential considerations but limiters nonetheless. I linger a while longer and both the chess moves and words start to dissipate. I get closer and closer to sleep as an overwhelming sense of familiarity envelopes me. I can barely describe it. There’s this unflinching impression, this innate knowledge, that I know where I am, and where I am going. I feel an incredible yearning but also feel welcomed, like a child running into his mother’s arms. I eagerly accept this new world with its shifting faces, voices, and colours. Perhaps I have dreamt them before and am simply returning. I linger a while longer and take a final breath of wake before finally dissolving into dreams.
But as I recount this experience, I start to question the substance of my everyday life. Working shifts in that damned warehouse, the machined white noise tuning me numb, day after day after day. In there, it’s so easy to forget that flowers exist… or the matchless hue of a clouded sunset. I wonder, in exasperation, just who it is at those times, with those lifeless eyes, moving my limbs in soulless motion? And a question pursues me: If we are aware—for even a moment—the sheer wonder of our minds, how is it so normal to be less? I sit here at my desk with the impulse of distilling this question into some grand philosophy of acceptance or living life to the fullest. But something about that seems apart from me as well, much like my soulless motions, mimicking life. I grab a lonely branch and play through its reasoning... night consumes me. Stars peek through my window, sliding and slicing and bursting and multiplying again and again and again. We've been here before. There’s a brief space of time just before sleep where dreams seep through the gates of consciousness.
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