dream

so i am in Paris or Vienna or Budapest, i don't know which, but somewhere with old buildings, and i'm researching something, i don't know what, something to do with people long gone. maybe Arabs, maybe Jews, something east shore of the Med because i am looking at a name carved into stone above a lintel and it's Levantine but although in the dream i see it perfectly clearly, i can't understand which it is. i often have this in dreams: i can see things but i can't process them. it makes for a weird experience, everything is commonplace but i can't fit it together.

so i am climbing a ladder into a loft space, and it is narrow, so there is barely enough room for my shoulders. suddenly, bombs are falling and the lights go off. i am stuck in a small space, unable to continue up or to get back down because it seems my shoulders are now stuck.

let me tell you something about South America, in the time of the neoliberal dictatorships. the doctrines in use in Iraq, for torturing people by breaking them down, were in use then. the difference is that the likes of Pinochet were not trying to get people to confess to terrorism -- they already knew who was doing what -- they were trying to shatter the personality, so that their victims were unable to be leftists because they could not reconstruct their worldview. one thing they did was an experiment in sensory deprivation. they would bury the leftists alive in small "graves" -- holes in the ground with doors that were locked. the leftists would be left in the holes for months, years, with nothing feeding their senses, cramped in the dark.

suddenly i feel as though i am in one of the holes in the ground. i am wide awake and cannot get back to sleep. i try to replace the vision by thinking about other things. but i can't. the feeling of suffocation, the indulgence of my claustrophobia, won't leave me. and i start thinking about the time we were creeping through rocks in NSW, and how panicky i felt when i was wedged in. no one realised because i didn't cry out or anything. but i realised how close the edge can be.

and now, reflecting on it, i think back to a dark night in Senegal. we had just taken our malaria tablets, and were lying in the dark. i must have been on the edge of sleep. it was very dark, darker than anywhere i have ever been before or since. there was no light at all, no moon, no streetlights, nothing. the hut we were in seemed tiny, oppressive. before i could even think about what i was doing, how i felt, i was screaming, scrabbling for my torch, desperate for light.

i do not think i would do well locked in a hole in the ground. i was thinking, how horrible it would be here in Australia, where ants would surely find you and add to your torture. then i realised, you would beg for ants. you would beg for anything that made you feel associated with the world.

i imagine the doors of the holes to be made of planks -- slabs of wood -- so that sometimes faint light could come through. (this was not the case in South America; they were completely dark.) i am imagining that i can see vague shapes.

then i realise that the grave i am in is covered with earth, completely dark, and i am imagining a world outside, because i have lost sight of it entirely.

posted by Dr Zen @ 8:05 am