Somnus

[image error] The famous photo – fountain “Children dance” on the station square of Stalingrad after the Nazi air raid…Antonio Marín Segovia, flickr Fuente: “Niños bailando” en Stalingrado

I fell asleep to a youtube Harvard lecture on the radicalization of a fascist. I had spent the early evening applying for a barely above minimum wage job when the site timed out because I took too much time downloading an app to help with a cover letter. Back to square one in a pandemic in which, as a cancer survivor and diabetic, I shouldn’t be working among untested individuals. Yet bills come, living expenses rise even with a tidal wave of death.

During youtube lectures of the American Historical Association, I sleep and dream of a fight I am having with a Greek restaurant owner, apparently trying to convince him to allow me to sell my barbeque at a Mediterranean food festival. “Barbeque, barbeque, barbeque! Always with your barbeque!” he says. Apparently I knew him well. Apparently, we had had many conversations about this strange topic and it seems, other things too. I think he likes me, for he tries to apologize. In his way. In the only way possible allowed by his culture for men. Though no one would taste the barbeque I had made.

In another dream, at a family gathering in a modern house I didn’t recognize – we always had traditional houses such as English Tudor, Farmhouse, ranch style, craftsman, tract homes which looked like such houses – a German guest of mine was visiting. When the arguing among us became intense, our guest engaged his jetpack with a manual pump that rendered his exit almost silent, and he floated out of the large open skylight. Before I fell asleep, I had learned the European fascist had a difficult time with long term relationships but occasionally sought connectivity with families of his choosing. Only for brief periods of time.

Previously that week, in my waking life, I had had a fight with my college age son. We never fought these days, almost never. In my once more lonely nest after Thanksgiving, I killed the regret with wine, over the counter meds, cbd oil, lazy indulgence, early bed, a failed job application. I woke feeling less alone, somehow, my sleep populated by people who seemed vaguely similar to people I knew in real life, pre-pandemic. Dreams had been illusive up until last night. “Insomnia” I learned from a “doctor” in a horror movie, actually means “without dreams.” I don’t really think this Hollywood-produced doctor is giving me the precise skinny since the Latin is literally “not sleep,” but maybe I am using a fine tooth comb, so opposite the dream state, and Hollywood creative license.

I can’t say for sure I want to find out what characters may pop up tonight but maybe the Harvard European Studies department and the American Historical Society lie in wait for just such occasions, to bring us to ourselves, to bring us to closer acquaintance to the dictators within, the evil we project, the friends among us who simply want to be understood, feel they have a place. Do you think we might have greater peace if we make room for our enemies? Even if that enemy is we ourselves?