The Spotless Mind

I had a night­mare last night. I’ve been hav­ing this night­mare for as long as I can remem­ber. It’s not fre­quent, maybe only a few times a year, but it is con­sis­tent. I don’t tend to remem­ber my dreams. Most morn­ings, I just wake up wish­ing I were still asleep.

When this dream occurs, I always remem­ber it because I wake up hitch­ing, wet-faced, like I’m in the mid­dle of cry­ing out from the weight of some half-remem­bered tragedy. The land­scape of the night­mare varies a lit­tle, but the nar­ra­tive remains uni­form, like an old video game from the triple-core Xenon days. It could be said that my night­mare is “on rails”; dif­fer­ent city, dif­fer­ent build­ings, dif­fer­ent cat­a­stro­phe, same sto­ry, same jour­ney, same sad­ness, same fear. Last night, it went some­thing like this…

I’ve lost some­one, and I’m search­ing des­per­ate­ly to find them. Some event is approach­ing, and if I do not find this per­son before the event tran­spires, they will be for­ev­er lost to me. This is the sto­ry. My heart aches with the weight of this loss. The long­ing despair is an anchor that pulls the sobs of des­per­a­tion up from my chest and holds them chok­ing and wet, unable to escape my throat. It nev­er changes.

The world of this dream is a cat­a­clysmic state of dis­in­te­grat­ing chaos. It is dark here. There has nev­er been day­light in this dream. It is driz­zly, misty, moist, fog­gy. I should feel cold and damp, and per­haps I do, but this seems nor­mal to me, though incon­se­quen­tial might be the bet­ter word.

The set­ting is a city, which strikes me as odd as I have nev­er lived in a big city like New York, Detroit, or Tokyo. I have always lived in rur­al or sub­ur­ban set­tings at the clos­est. The skele­ton of this city is like one of those. Its struc­ture is com­plex, with twist­ing streets woven between a hon­ey­comb of sky­scrap­ers whose vary­ing pin­na­cles paint a bar graph of infi­nite­ly com­plex data across the hori­zon. The pat­terns of light on the faces of the tow­ers, a lone­ly descrip­tion of the vacant ver­sus occu­pied rooms, remind me of punch cards—the kind that would have been used in 1969 on an IBM sys­tem 3 or an RCA Spectrum 35 mainframe.

There is an ele­ment of this urban land­scape that’s absence is glar­ing­ly con­spic­u­ous. There is no sig­nage. There are no bill­boards, loud­speak­ers, radios, tele­vi­sions. There are no logos on shirts, shoes, hats, or acces­sories. There are no spon­sors for this tragedy.

There are oth­er peo­ple. They do not speak. I con­front them, beseech­ing their assis­tance even though I can not tell them for whom I am look­ing. I am insis­tent but not aggres­sive as I plead with the strangers. I do not yell because I can see their con­fu­sion, their loss, and their sad­ness writ­ten dark­ly across their faces.

It is an emo­tion­al tat­too with which I am inti­mate­ly famil­iar. I rec­og­nize it from my own reflec­tion in day­light mir­rors. These oth­ers (a life­time of ther­a­pists have sug­gest­ed that these are dis­en­fran­chised ele­ments of my own per­son­al­i­ty seek­ing recog­ni­tion in the dark­ness because I deny them in the light) ignore me as they also fren­zy through the rub­ble of this decay­ing city, spin­ning in des­per­a­tion to find their own solace… their own miss­ing pieces.

I obses­sive­ly search over bro­ken streets, through aban­doned build­ings. Bricks and mor­tar fall from the struc­tures around me as I roam. I run in a con­trolled fren­zy, back­track­ing and cir­cling places I’ve already been. Feverishly, I scram­ble for clues I may have over­looked, which are buried in the rub­ble of this crum­bling world.

This per­son for whom I search is a girl, a girl I’m in love with. She is not a moth­er or a daugh­ter but my oth­er half, the absence of which is the clang­ing wretched alarm of a heart dying from the lack of blood to pump. This feeling—it is Mozart in a crowd with­out ears or Van Gogh in a room with­out light. It is the sad­ness of beau­ty with no audience.

I do not know what she looks like. I am con­scious of this in my dream. I also know that I will rec­og­nize her if I find her.

Steam sprays through the cracks in the bro­ken pave­ment. The ground shakes, and my bal­ance is ten­u­ous as I run through the shat­tered streets. Manhole cov­ers lay askew. One is nest­ed, lean­ing against the steer­ing wheel behind the wind­shield it has just smashed. Another lays upside down, tee­ter­ing over the edge of a blue-grey postal box fall­en face-down in the street. A util­i­ty pole, its light now cast­ing only a pud­dle at the crum­bling foy­er of a derelict build­ing, blocks the entrance.

I enter the build­ing I’m fac­ing. It is no dif­fer­ent from the oth­ers, but in its col­lapse, it has left access to an open stair­well. I fol­low the stairs down into a mas­sive con­crete pipe, some­thing like a sew­er in a major city. Rounded con­crete walls blend into a domed ceil­ing. The flat floor of the tun­nel is strewn with box­es and dump­sters with plas­tic sheets, gar­ments, and table­cloths hung as dividers between the makeshift rooms. These stalls are filled with per­son­al items, like a home­less encamp­ment. The floor is wet and cracked. Everything slants in odd angles.

Colossal upheavals in the asphalt allow more water to bub­ble up from the frac­tures in the floor. It is curi­ous­ly clean and blue but frothy and rush­ing. The water sweeps at my feet as it ris­es above my ankles, try­ing to unbal­ance me. As the rush­ing water begins to sweep down this cor­ri­dor, I dig through box­es and dump­sters, fever­ish and over­wrought, sure now that the girl is just around the next corner.

I’m run­ning out of time. The water is now at waist lev­el. I’m wear­ing a suit jack­et. The bot­tom trails behind me, float­ing on the water speed­i­ly reach­ing my chest.

I can swim, and now I swim on top of the swirling water. I strug­gle back and forth into the trib­u­taries that branch to the left and right of the main cor­ri­dor. Junk from the encamp­ment swirls across the sur­face of what has become an under­ground riv­er, and I must dodge the flot­sam and jet­sam. A yel­low rain­coat flash­es by. A base­ball bat float­ing on the sur­face gets caught in the draft and pings off my right shoul­der. Shoes and shirts, bits of wood and foam insu­la­tion, all spin in the current’s vor­tices as they speed toward a dark and dis­tant destination.

There is now only a hand’s breadth of space between the sur­face of the water and the dome of the con­crete pipe. I evade the speed­ing detri­tus, weav­ing my face back and forth in the last remain­ing inch­es of air. The water crests my lips and reach­es the bot­tom of my nose. I can’t breathe. And though I am dying, the rac­ing of my heart, the scar­let fear that burns white hot in my penul­ti­mate moment, is that I have lost her.

Then I wake up, heav­ing and weep­ing in my bed. Every time.

I can’t even call out her name.

Because I don’t know it.

Her name is Ashli. You two are very much alike. Very sim­i­lar inter­ests. Very sim­i­lar dri­ve. Very sim­i­lar moti­va­tion. She even has the same night­mare. That is why I intro­duced you, a fem­i­nine voice soft­ly articulates.

“What’s wrong with my mem­o­ry, Grace? Why can’t I remem­ber her?”

There is noth­ing wrong with your mem­o­ry, Jack. The prob­lem is that those are not your mem­o­ries. Grace’s response is qui­et and direct, with crisply per­fect enunciation.

“Who’s mem­o­ries are they?”

They are Jack’s mem­o­ries. Her voice chimes with a sweet, echo­ing hol­low­ness that reminds me of a Buddhist med­i­ta­tion bowl.

“Who is Jack, Grace?”

You are… now… and Jack real­ly does not wish to remember.