Re-entry

When I was sixteen, for a tenth grade biology project, I studied lucid dreaming. I never breached the topic much further than the surface level research which at the time felt like conducting a thesis to my young brain, but I’ve never forgotten a few of the things I wrote down on notecards.We’re still not sure what the scientific reason is for dreaming, though there are a few theories. Dreams may very well be random synapses firing during REM sleep. They might be practice for our waking life. They might be a way in which we reckon with our lives while the brain rests. Meanwhile, even less well understood, lucid dreaming is a specific type that occurs when, within a dream, one realizes that one is dreaming and upon said realization, the dreamer attains a measure of control over the sequence of events of their unconscious narrative. I myself have only done so twice and sadly both times I gained this awareness that I was unconscious (now there’s an oxymoron for you), I awoke with a start.

I now invite you upon a tangent. Does anyone remember the book Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury? Everyone in my freshman year English class absolutely hated that book, myself included, but during the opening scene, specifically expounded in class, Douglas, a twelve year old boy spends a day outside and is hit suddenly by the overwhelming realization that he is alive.

I remember at the time reading this I was like…jeez, this kid is whack, this book is whack. What twelve year old feels this? But man…

A few hours ago, I myself was a veritable Douglas, squished in the very last row of the plane from Kathmandu to Bangkok, a litany of asses lining up to pee bumping into my shoulder, the most polluted city in the world rapidly turning to dusty memories behind me. The tears started, they couldn’t be stopped. An alarmed Australian man in the adjacent aisle kindly handed me a tissue and pressed his palms together in that nice way that bearded, older, white men tend to emulate while in Nepal.

I was caught for the moment like a fly in amber. The significance of it all, the act of my leaving, the family and friends I was officially and markedly departing from, the emotions…I was alive.

We read such classics in high school with absolutely zero perspective, zero context, wondered both privately to ourselves as well as (for the more vocal among us) aloud in class if there was any relevance to these stories at all. We immediately forgot about the book once the semester ended, but then, there it was, wham bam, that very same sentiment come rushing back six years later, more relevant than ever.

This feeling always comes from out of the blue, usually during an overtly mundane activity like brushing my teeth or looking out a window. It happened when leaves lapped at the sides of the bus I was in squeezed through the little streets of Kagbeni and onto the dusty plateau of Jomsom. I was struck with the sudden and overwhelming feeling that I was exactly where I was, doing exactly what I was doing. Rather than realizing that I’m dreaming, I realize that I am very much awake–very much alive.

The last morning I was in Boudha, after a banana pancake at my favorite café, I walked three times around the giant, gorgeous stupa that had served as the clock around which I had wound for the past four months, the wheel, the center, the everything. I looked around at all the people, the momolas and popolas with their prayer beads, the teens and babies and obese street dogs and shopkeepers and street sweepers. Then I looked at my own two feet and was reminded that I was also there. I felt a catch in my chest.

Perhaps if I was twelve, these re-realizations would be teeming with lightness, with the profound literary pleasure that Dandelion Douglas felt during his youthful epiphany. But, either regrettably or very happily, I’m not twelve. Because I am not twelve, with these realizations now comes the understanding that these are exactly the parts of my life that I will remember, that may come to define me in adulthood, that will affect and change me for better or worse. How much more lucid does it get?

Traveling is such an incredible privilege. To be able to spend time and be somewhere with no goal besides being exactly there doing exactly that is a rarity. It can also be incredibly difficult for workaholics like me. So moments like these are powerful especially in that they remind us that they will end. As joltingly joyful as they can be, they carry that profound, existential, melancholy. The moments, just by the sake of their occurrence, are destined to end. All good things…

After my program ended a few weeks ago, two friends and I celebrated by trekking the Annapurna circuit (an experience which probably warrants its own post, but here we are). The thing I love most about trekking is the time it gives you to really get into your body and to think–an aimless type of thinking, the meditative kind where you allow your consciousness to steep in your neurological firings, a conscious type of dreaming. I walked and I thought. I thought and I wrote. I thought as I made it over mountains. I thought as I tried to speak Tibetan to anyone who would listen. I thought as I ruminated upon the many travelers I met. I thought before bed and immediately upon waking up.

One night after a particularly intense day of hiking, I couldn’t sleep, perhaps because of altitude, but mainly because, as I lay there in my sleeping bag, I was struck with a big, fat, “I’m here” moment, and it got me good. I shivered and picked up my journal.

I wrote then:

I can’t tell if I’m happy right now or not. I lean towards happy, but I’m anxious, because I can feel the passing of time so strongly. That impermanence is both a comfort during the uncomfortable moments and one of the most terrifying things. When I’m sad or angry or homesick, I know that it will pass, and when I get fed up with being in Nepal, I know in a week I will be gone and entirely forget the wanting to leave and it will be replaced by nostalgia and love.

I know all this, yet then then I fear how much has happened and how much has ended. But I know though, that even if I was never going to die or something like that, these moments would still pass away as they do, and I would be stuck endless within them. If time never passed at all, if nothing began, nothing ended, nothing would really exist at all, would it? No late night talks with new friends, no parties, no kisses, meals, no flights, no relationships, no games, no books…nothing.

Everything that is good and everything that is bad will begin and end and there is absolutely no other way it could be.

I’ll admit. Easier written in the Himalayas than done. But it helped me get to sleep.Okay, jeez, my apologies for all that philosophizing. That was a lot. Forgive me! Everything is weird! I’m currently sitting in the Bangkok airport eating Pad Thai, surrounded by strangers, about to return home after four months of completing a variety of some of the most intense and difficult experiences of my young life. Suffice it to say that I’m tired, that I’m juiced, that I’m confused, that I’m now oddly niche-ly educated, and that I’m wearing a regrettably strong smelling Calvin Klein cologne that I sprayed in the Duty Free shop in my layover-induced stupor. Thinking, thinking, thinking.

And of course, duality style, I’m both terrified and overjoyed that it’s all over. But then again, what is “it” that has ended exactly? Life keeps on trucking, whether I’m in Nepal or in Brattleboro, India or Boston. I’ll keep on having moments that make me feel alive because, well…I am. I mean I’m even having one now writing this.

Wait…help! Will they ever stop? Am I doomed now to exist in a state of suspended existentialism forever? I didn’t sign up for that!!!

Just kidding. Nothing is permanent, remember?

One last thing. While I was doing that project on dreaming back in high school, I tried to become my own lucid dreaming case study. One method is to start doing multiple “reality checks” during the day so that you habituate into doing them while dreaming, an opportunity to snap into lucidity. I drew a dot on my hand with the idea that every time I looked at it I would analyze if I was awake or not. Evidently it didn’t work very well.

But no matter. I don’t think I really mind that I can’t lucid dream. If anything, more so than I’ll ever been able to in a lucid dream, I have real ownership over these waking moments, a hand in creating them, control over how I react to them, how I reflect on them.

And anyway, if I drew a dot on my hand now, the reality checks might become more difficult to figure. My life’s been pretty unbelievable lately.