Notes From Bed
In six parts
Prenote:
I shared a dream once with someone. Everyone was sitting at high-top tables on a roof of a white-painted party. I understood at the time of my sleep I was in control of something that was not quiet my real life, but the current reality I was in. The idea that it was a dream was a loose thread of thought, a concept for which I had yet to name as a dream. To test the theory that I might control my surroundings I looked at a river flowing down below and I changed the direction of its current. Suddenly we were not on the roof anymore we were lower, on a dock, in those tables watching the change of tide.
My date at the party was next to me and I knew who he was though I hadn’t looked at him. The strange paralyzing consciousness of this moment prevented me from such because I knew oddly that what I couldn’t name then would suddenly be realized if I saw him sitting there next to me. For the time being everything else was so plausible besides him. If I looked the moment would be irreversibly surreal. So instead of talking to each other we talked away. We made jokes with the table and we sent our laughter in opposite directions. We held hands but under the lean of our opposite elbows. Until something gave away. He turned to me and I was compelled to look back. The thread of consciousness suddenly was pulled tight. I knew what it meant to be in a dream. I understood the control I wielded now. Yet strangely too I knew if I did the single thing I was compelled to do the dream would be over.
Note 1:
My therapist once asked me when I felt beautiful. In bed, was my reply. I have tried to explain it to others. What about it makes me feel beautiful, but logic is suspended as it often is in dreams. Things I dislike any other time are suddenly quite beautiful to me. The red puff of my eyes, the knot at the crown of my head. My eye bags steeped in darkness or my pajamas crooked and messy. It is a feeling though I have regardless when I first wake: I am so beautiful. I doubt it is coincidence that to sleep we are our most vulnerable. I have learned to appreciate the feeling of that fear. To be willing to witness what your subconscious wants you to see. Some dreams we lose to memory but this one stayed right there in vivid detail. Why? I wasn’t sure. I knew though I had done with it what I had needed to.
Note 2:
In my dreamscape, I went to a party with someone who I had on more than a few occasions fallen asleep near. Nights where the trains were running express or when the dinner finished late. He was always quite ready to rest. No matter how long we knew each other, however, I was always deeply afraid to lie down. Even though I knew by morning he would wake, get us water, then return to me to share it. That he’d fall into the bed and pull me from my side to his own and we’d shut our eyes a while clinging because we knew in some way what had occurred between us then was sacred. To allow someone to see that vulnerability that is occurring twofold. Watch me witness myself at my most trusting. Where I am finding out what it is I long for. Where I am naming things I have not yet had the ability to realize. I am in a dream and I know it is a dream, but that is not a word to me yet. Can you lie there and witness me? Could I let you witness me? It is like they say dreams are occurring in the last two minutes of sleep. What if I am the last to wake up? It took me hours to fall asleep there. And even when I did sleep I never dreamed when he was around. I was never very good at being vulnerable for him on purpose.
Note 3:
I had a teacher tell me not to write from bed. I felt she was right for suggesting this. You get tired, your brain gets tired or it recognizes where you are. At the time, however, and for many years after I didn’t have a desk to work at. You get used to how it feels to write where you lie. Even now having worked at my desk I always find that the most genuine parts of any piece I write come right before I fall asleep. Wrapped in my blankets, a thought takes form from nothing. I pick my pen up I jot it down. I have duped myself into being honest.
Note four:
I think about the dream a lot. Despite the intensity of our relationship I almost never dreamed about him. Even though I more than subconsciously desired something from our relationship that I never got. I think it would have been too much. To long for tangible and intangible things, to try and write all those things down. I was afraid to want anything to do with him and perhaps we couldn’t dream next to each other, but we could talk. I had learned to get by on the things that had no name. Sleep that was not rest. Men you could not let witness you. I had been happy when this dream came to me, happier than I had been since I had met him, since it had ended. There was something left to do, to see, something that had not occurred to me. I woke that morning and lingered in bed tossing and turning like in kicking up dust meaning would come with it. It was not there though. Not entirely.
I have this strange feeling if I write all these thoughts down it will suddenly make sense to me why I had it. It might not make sense now but I hope it will soon to you. It is certainly illuminating something to me.
Note five:
How do dreams come? Why some nights? Why not others? Maybe, I thought, maybe I was no longer afraid to want. But isn’t it, in many ways, at its very core, always terrifying to dream? To reach for something which isn’t real or to immerse yourself within its narrative? How often I find myself in a made-up place disappointed by the flatness, knowing that some things will never be true no matter how often I linger there. And true how sad it is that some beds we can sleep all we want in but will never yield the vulnerability to truly rest.
Note six:
I had something to say to him. That is why I decided to look. Maybe he felt it too. When we made eye contact I had among the other strange feelings the belief that we were there together. As if suddenly we were people who could witness each other in a different way. Look at me seeing myself, by being here you are part of my longing. By being here you are witnessing me find names for my own lost longing. Did it have to make sense why? Would it ever?
There was a sense of change. I had something to say and I was not afraid to say it. Wherever he was. Here or in that bed wherever he now lives. The bed I had been afraid on. If we were together then we were also there in some way weren’t we?
When we looked at each other, though I knew it was him the entire time, I saw and felt us recognize the person there. It was uncharacteristically authentic for a dream. I hadn’t tried to change anything, hadn’t asked my mind to show me his relief to see me. It was there on its own. I could do something with this time I knew. It was abundantly clear to me as my desire began to weigh on the moment along with my understanding it was almost over. And with anyone you were close with, there might always be more words to say but we had been out of time longer than we had ever been together. We’d been even given a small amount again. I could do something new, I could say though this one thing on purpose.
“I love you.”
We smiled and the dream was over.
End Note:
You can tell me everything you believe about dreams. I’m not one to mull the logistics of impossibility over. It had always bothered me the sleep I couldn’t have with him that I often wanted desperately to come to. Was it real is not always the question to ask of incomprehensible things. Did it feel real and is it enough?
All I can say is I have not dreamed of him since.
Slowmaxxing: a term coined by @robyns_quill I couldn’t find their tweet when I was first inspired me to start the mulled-over column of this newsletter. I now have the proper terminology and definition. A counter-movement to grind culture and overconsumption. For slow-moving, slow-reading, slow projects. 600-page books, anti-binge, and appreciation for the preciousness of the occurring moment. Naturally, gratitude for the mundane is my mindset on all fronts. I’m made to live slowly. So, here’s what I’ve been mulling over.
The Siren Song By Nina Maclaughlin: “To have someone understand our story, to know what we’ve suffered, experienced, endured, and to sing it back to us, isn’t this, in the end, what we long for? Is this, then, the ultimate seduction?” This is one of those essays I read forever ago and constantly return to. The concept of the siren song has been buzzing in my head. Who has sung back to me? What in us was calling out to each other? A terrifying question. An illuminating one.
Ancient Report, in the Tall, Tall Weeds by Ada Limón “When the plane went down in San Francisco,/ I thought of my friend M. He’s obsessed with plane crashes. /He memorizes the wrecked metal details,/ the clear cool skies cut by black scars of smoke. /Once, while driving, he told me about all the crashes:
The one in blue Kentucky, in yellow Iowa. /How people go on, and how people don’t./ It was almost a year before I learned/ that his brother was a pilot./ I can’t help it,/ I love the way men love.” I have nothing to add. I can’t stop thinking it: I love the way men love.Lucky Sometimes by Pokey LaFarge: “I was broken, I was poor, Then you said I could be yours Though I don't have a dime Even bums, get lucky sometimes.” the song itself has an old-timey croon to it. I can’t say where this song takes me but some mellow song in my heart. And the vintage feel is only made sweeter by the repetition of that one true line Even bums get lucky sometimes. So there is hope for us all.
Planet Earth II: Grasslands:
It is a very beautiful life we have. Don’t you think?
The Woman in the Waves by Gustave Courbet
“Waiting for a reunion that might never happen.” This is a quote from my best memory of a poem I saw randomly somewhere that I have yet to locate in regard to Hades watching Patroclus and Achilles reunite in Elysium. It has eaten me up inside. All I remember is Hades smiling. The pain though is deep. To hope for something that might never come. I will surely be thinking of this for a long time.
The newsletter is almost over. You might have heard, though I was Totally lowkey about it, I was barricade at a Harry Styles concert last Friday. Hold applause! It was a lot of work. I woke up early on a day I was celebrating rest, typical. My cousin and I went. I have never really had anyone to go to his concerts with. And even so my going has more often than not been a gift or serendipitous. I have written about his music here, I connect to it. My cousin and I were talking about what we wanted from that day. We wanted wrist bands, barricade, we wanted him to sing medicine, and for a while we simply just wanted tickets. All of those things came true. I don’t know why or how. I don’t know if we were particularly aligned with the stars or manifested because we forgot to think it couldn’t happen but it all did.
After, my friend Maria said “I’m glad you got that. You really deserved it.” I cringed at first. I was just a fan in a million of ordinary people. People who liked the music. Talked about him. Grew up to one direction. I don’t have the words yet to describe what I’ve come to realize about my own relationship with deserving. I just know it made me sad when I realized that I had never felt I deserved it to begin with. That a thread of skepticism runs through me when it comes to joy in things I want but might not need. I am saying now though at night I deserve good things I just can’t quite name why or deconstruct the narrative I hadn’t realized was there. When I have the words, I’ll let you know. For now, I just want to say I remember when the song Boyfriends came out. I remember how it felt to have someone put words to your experience. To find meaning in something sad and see something beautiful. I deserved that comfort. I can say at least that.
That is all for this month.
I’ll see ya around if not here, then somewhere groovy.
That’s all this month! If you enjoyed the little conversation we had let me know! Save, share, and tag @chloeinletters
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Here’s to Starbucks Fridays, insufficient funds, and being remembered
Love always,
Chloé
omg you’ve done it again!! so in awe of your words :’)