Heart of Darkness

“It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams...No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream-alone...” --Joseph Conrad, "Heart of Darkness"


The traveling is draining...I remember city names when I depart because the name is on an airport sign. People, shapes, colors all blend...a great grayness.  

I rarely sleep well, rarely sleep good.  I drift unmoored.  Nighttime isn't so much a comfort as it is a beginning that allows me to take sips of a liquid that might hasten a dream.  But that doesn't work so much.  It doesn't work well.  It doesn't work good.

I try...really try like putting my back into it trying...to slip into a stance where you might be, where I might find you.  I want to come back...I want to return.  It may seem that while I am out here that the only place I would find you is in my sleep, in a dream.

I may catch glimpses...I might catch whispers.  I might think I see you and I think I might hear you.
But when I awake it is a return to that alone-place.  It is a place I know I think fairly well.

And I think if I did catch you lurking I wouldn't be able to describe it.  I wouldn't be able to convey it.  It is like a drowning man seeing an arm reaching out to him...the person on the other side is in a very different place and thus cannot imagine my feelings.

But I don't think I dream alone.

I don't think I'm completely empty.

I think you may have a perspective.  I think you may have a Polaroid stamped someplace that is furled and maybe yellowed but it is still an image.  

And maybe you took it in a sleep, when you were sleeping well, when you were sleeping good.

And maybe you fall asleep rather easily when I am away...maybe you can let the embers die in a collapse of an evening and warmly and fuzzily drift...moored securely to the dock of your day.

Maybe your day is filled with everything except me.  No reminders, no markings.  No pictures, per se.  No presence.  Left to your own devices...memories, ephemeral.  Ghosts and creakings in the attic.  

But maybe when you let go of the oars and you allow yourself to drift free, to become unmoored...you enter waters unknown...and maybe look for things known.

And maybe, just then, at that small distant point you stumble upon a thought of me, a stubbed-toe of me...a spilled glass of me, a smudge.  An error.  A crumpled paper thrown towards trash that misses...a mistake in your day...a broken pencil, a missed call.  Things that don't go right, things that might go wrong.  And in that instant it is when you are at your most open, your most exposed...and you allow yourself that intersection with me, adrift, alighting in your mind as if you had suddenly dreamed about something you had never thought you might dream about...

And we find ourselves as equals...unable to reach, unable to touch, but definitely able to see.  And to see we are not alone.