"Are you going to eat chalk for the rest of your life?"
Kendrick had taken to asking me this same question every time that I unwrapped an antacid tablet and popped it into my mouth.
"The doctor told me that whenever I felt any discomfort I should just eat a Rolaid. It's Doctor's orders," I smiled.
Kendrick looked disgusted and shook his head.
"Do you expect to go through the rest of your life taking that stuff?"
I shrugged.
Kendrick just kept shaking his head and giving me that look. It was the look given to the utterly pathetic. I had seen him give it to panhandling drunks on the street, cripples, and the mentally retarded. It was the "I feel sorry for you" look that makes the recipient feel less than fully human. I hated being looked at that way.
"Would you lighten up!?" I moaned.
"Well, I bet if you took better care of yourself you could alleviate the symptoms. You worry too much. You need to stop worrying so much."
I rolled my eyes up in my head. "Worrying has nothing to do with it. I have something physically wrong."
Kendrick just shook his head and continued to look at me with that annoying expression.
The painful burning in my chest and abdomen did not seem to be getting any better, but that was just what the doctor said would be the case. I was in the position of simply managing the symptoms unless I decided to opt for major surgery. I preferred taking antacid tablets to going under the knife.
My sleeping habits were severely disrupted by the hiatal hernia. It was inevitable that the burning feeling in my chest would become very intense when I lay down, and it would become even worse if I tried to lie on my stomach. The effects of the antacid tablets usually wore off just as I drifted to sleep, and I either woke up or experienced bizarre nightmares. The nightmares I didn't mind so much. At least they were interesting.
I was sitting in the cafe when the stranger approached me. I can't remember what his face looked like. He walked up to the table where I was seated and delivered his message: "Colleen's dead."
I was shocked by the message and annoyed by his deadpan delivery.
As he walked out of the coffee house, panic shot through my body. It ping-ponged around in my skull for a micro-second and then rocketed down my throat, through my esophagus and out my anus. By the time that the panic had exited my body I was left with an acidy, parched and jittery feeling which I had come to be acquainted with numerous times in the past after drinking too much coffee. The reaction that I experienced was enough to divert my thoughts from the message I had just received. I looked at my hands. They were shaking.
I stood up to leave when the stranger's words echoed in my head: "Colleen's dead."
Once again the sensation of panic shot through my body. The feeling that I associated with over indulgence in coffee lingered afterwards. I stumbled to a pay phone and a quarter appeared in my hand. I dropped it into the coin slot and dialed a number.
"County Hospital," came the voice from the other end of the line.
"Is Colleen there?" I stammered.
"No. She's dead."
A long, electric pulse of panic passed through the center of my body. It was about a foot in diameter and a yard long. It pushed its way through my digestive tract and seared all of the flesh in its path. The incredible heat radiated by the shaft of panic boiled away all of the liquids in my body and I was reduced to a heap of ash.
Initially, I couldn't move when I woke up from that nightmare. I was laying on my back staring at the ceiling.
Beside me lay Colleen. Her face peeked out from underneath the blankets. It was only when I noticed her relaxed breathing that I was able to move my body. I poked Colleen in the shoulder to wake her up, or more precisely, in order to confirm that she was alive. She groaned and opened up her eyes. She was annoyed and scowling.
"What!?" she angrily mumbled.
"I dreamt that you were dead," I explained.
She was already asleep again by the time that I spoke.
I got out of bed and looked at the clock. It was 7 AM. I scratched my head as I walked to the bathroom. The tile floor was very cold and shocked me into a state of wakefulness. I sat down on the toilet. It was just as cold as the floor. The only thing that wasn't cold was my digestive tract. It burned with stomach acid, so I reached for the jar of antacid sitting on the bathroom counter.
There are a variety of theories about the meaning and function of dreams. Freud claimed that dreams result from the lowering of inhibitions during sleep. That is when our wishes and anxieties, unhindered by social conditioning and norms, come to the fore. The "id" instincts can then express themselves, cloaked in the symbolism of dream images, providing a relief valve for repressed instincts and urges.
Recent theories, on the other hand, emphasize the meaninglessness of dreams. According to these theories, dreams are simply the garbage of the mind. Every night, that garbage must be dumped so that our rational minds don't get too cluttered with information; like dumping the cache on your computer so that your web browser will function properly.
My dreams, I've decided, come from my body. The pain in my stomach produces the images in my mind. In one sense they are meaningful. They represent a cry for help from my gut. In another sense they are meaningless. They are simply an epiphenomenon of my malady.
My philosophy has much in common with my dreams.
"I've come to the conclusion that there are only two reasons to read fiction," I grumbled.
Kendrick was scrutinizing me with his disapproving look. He knew that I was grumpy, and he knew that at times like these I acted the way that he acted normally; like a cynical jerk.
"What are those reasons?" he asked.
"Well first, if the fiction is especially well written. Someone who is really good with putting words together deserves to be read. Reading a well written piece of fiction is kind of like looking at well done painting. You may not like the subject matter, but you can appreciate the talent and skill of the artist."
"The second reason is if the author has an especially important point to make. In that case the fictional work is just a vehicle to get an interesting or important point across, and you can appreciate the subject matter even if the author lacks artistic talent or skill."
"All other fiction is useless. I mean, if a person can't write well or doesnÕt have an important point to make, why read the story? Anyone can make up a story. When I was a kid I used to read lots of horror novels. I loved them. Then one day I was reading this book about people who were turned into zombies by some sort of mad scientist, and half way through I thought to myself, 'Why am I reading this? I could just make up my own story.' I put the book down and never picked up another novel until after college."
Kendrick looked annoyed.
"There are plenty of other reasons to read fiction," he responded. "Sometimes I just want to escape. A good horror, science fiction or fantasy novel is an effective tool for that purpose. Sometimes I want to be thrilled. A good adventure novel is what I read in those cases. Sometimes I want to laugh, so IÕll read a piece of humor. There are as many reasons to read fiction as there are genres of fiction. I think your two reasons are rather limiting."
"Bah!" I spat, and reached for another antacid tablet. "You must have very little imagination if you need someone else to make up stories to thrill or humor you. I can make things up for myself. Either that or I take a nap and enjoy my own dreams."
One of my recurring dreams didn't even have a story line that it followed. In this dream I was traveling around an oval course in space. It wasn't my body that was moving, but my awareness. I went round and round, slowly cycling along the path.
At one end of the oval, I experienced a feeling of well being and comfort. When I was at that end of the path, there was a pleasant hum that filled the air and I felt a warm, soft sensation all around me.
However, as I moved away from that end of the oval path and towards the opposite end, the sensations that I experienced began to be unpleasant. The hum in the air became a shrill, loud screech and the warm soft feeling became burning discomfort.
As the the dream went on, I simply vacillated between these two poles. As I moved around the oval path, I knew what to expect. When I was at the comfortable end of the path, I dreaded my journey towards the other end, and when I was at the uncomfortable end, I looked forward to being back where it was pleasant. I just moved back and forth over the course of my dream, like a marble caught in an circular track.
Colleen suffered from recurrent nightmares. I was certain that I would be awaked in the middle of the night, every night, by her vocalizations and movements. Sometimes she screamed, sometimes she yelled obscenities, and sometimes she lashed out, kicking or hitting me.
Her nightmares always had the same underlying theme. A dark, male figure was stalking her and she was trying to get away. She was always frustrated in her efforts to flee, however. She would trip and fall, or try to hide in a too obvious spot and the stalker would catch up to her. It was at that point that she would start screaming in her dream and in real life.
Colleen claimed that in her dreams, she knew that if she yelled and moved around that she would be able to wake herself up. She was aware at some level that she was dreaming, but this awareness did nothing to alleviate the fear that was conjured up during the course of the dream episode.
"What do you think causes your nightmares?" I asked her once.
"I don't know," she answered. "Sometimes I think they have something to do with my feeling like life is out of control. In the dreams I feel like I'm completely powerless to stave off the man who is following me. I've noticed that it is the same feeling that I get at the times when I'm most frustrated at work, or with you or with members of my family."
"At other times I think my dreams are just nonsense," she added.
"You know, in German a nightmare is called an 'alptraum.' It literally means a 'dream about the alps.' I wonder how they came up with that."
Colleen nodded. "It makes sense if you think about it. When climbing a mountain you experience many of the same feelings of powerlessness that I experience in my nightmares. As you push your body to the brink of its capabilities, your become aware of how insignificant you are. You could die on the slopes of the mountain, but the mountain wouldn't care. Whether you make it to the top is of no consequence to the mountain. You are nothing to it. ...And that awareness is frightening."
"...the very thing that the nightmares are made of. It makes me think of those mystics who torture themselves in order to achieve spiritual enlightenment. Sometimes the only way to really turn inward and confront yourself is to subdue the flesh."
Pieces of fiction, dreams and philosophies are the complicated mental consequences of somatic stimulus. The first link in the causal chain leading to the writing of a piece of fiction, to a dream or to a philosophy is a source of discomfort which makes the author aware of himself. The body is the first point of contact between the outside world of physical existence and the inside world of the mind, but the body is also capable of producing its own forms of internal discomfort independent of the outside world.
My body talks unambiguously to my mind through the burning in my gut, but my mind is like some sort of insane artist that interprets everything in wild and imaginative ways.
My body and mind just don't understand each other.