reason. Was the fear of insanity another instance of my imagination turning against me? The question’s pointless if one’s being victimized by such a fear. If one fears the possibility of becoming insane, then one’s—unfortunately—already halfway there. It could be said that imagining one might become insane is the first indication of insanity: one still has a foot in the rational world, in the sense one’s alarmed at the prospect of being deprived of it, but one’s other foot is in a shady place where fact and fiction are conjoining and one’s commencing to consort with things conjured up in dreams.
It was then that I began to feel as imprisoned and stymied by the Maine town as much as, if not more than, I’d felt imprisoned and stymied by my Manhattan apartment. What a nefarious trap, baited with false promises of self-rejuvenation and -renewal, the town was! I’d come to the town in good faith, intent upon purging my emotions of the mistakes I’d made in Manhattan, allowing the verdant countryside to divert the negative energy from my body—restore balance to my self-esteem, heal my spirit, re-inspire me with the belief I was truly the master of my destiny and capable of pursuing commendable goals, achieving equilibrium in my life. What I’d encountered instead was the lack of an opportunity to preoccupy myself with anything besides gyrations of the imagination; and what I’d discovered is that life in gyrations of the imagination, at first immensely appealing, ultimately exposes one to overmuch unappeasable yearning and turns one’s body into a veritable conflagration from which there’s seemingly no escape. It was the absence of meaningful external activities to engage in that was responsible for Clarissa’s existence. I needed to exit the town immediately, before my involuntary fascination with a dead woman ensured that my premonitions regarding insanity came inescapably true.
Needing to exit the town was one thing, being capable of exiting the town was another. I was already too entangled in Clarissa’s spell to focus for long on the necessity of escape, much less formulate viable plans for doing so: the emotions attendant upon my visualizations of Clarissa were rapidly infiltrating the whole of my psyche and I wasn’t allowed many moments of clarity concerning the amount of danger I was in. How gaze outside of an inner sensory storm, orient oneself in accurate perceptions of the precariousness of one’s situation, when that storm’s displacing all else? How fully grasp that one’s in danger, when the danger itself is becoming the beginning and the end of the perceptible world? If I still had something of a foot in the rational world then that foot was the weaker one by far. The first night of suffering through futile attempts to sleep soundly after encountering Clarissa’s name on the tombstone swiftly spun into the next day and the next day swiftly spun into the next night. During this interval I predominantly remained in bed and ate little, if at all; this, coupled with my lack of sleep and inability to sleep, made me all the more susceptible to the influences of my imagination. With each passing hour Clarissa’s hold upon me gained ground and I was little better than a leaf caught in a swift river’s current.
On the second night I writhed in bed nonstop, still wrestling with the elusiveness of sleep, while Clarissa’s beautiful face and wild eyes and sensual voice continued to blaze in my mind’s eye and echo in my inner ear and engulf me in icy heat. I remember biting the pillows, gnawing and tearing at them with my teeth, until their down was clinging to the sweat on my face. I remember rubbing ice cubes up and down my legs and over my belly and chest and neck and face in yet another useless attempt to calm myself. When I shut my eyes Clarissa’s picture, as always, only flared with greater insistence and jolted me with stronger bursts of hunger. I couldn’t help but begin to believe it would be a matter of hours before my senses were saturated with energy to the extent they’d thoroughly destabilize my perceptual faculties, overwhelm my ability to think—scatter my thoughts into nonsensical noise, change every image in my imagination into shattered white light: if I didn’t obtain some sleep soon, I’d undoubtedly lose whatever of my sanity remained! I do not exaggerate: it was a physical ordeal, fraught with acute discomfort, to attempt to think. Each time I succeeded in fighting through the tumult within me and becoming capable of placing myself in my surroundings and ordering my thoughts, what greeted me? I immediately realized my ears were buzzing—that my temples were throbbing—that my pulse was racing—that my heart was hammering at my ribs—that my muscles were as taught as if I was being stretched on a rack.
My last clear recollection of anything pertaining to my concrete surroundings as I threshed about in bed consists of the scarlet digits of the clock on the nightstand, displaying the numerals 12:27: I’m certain that’s the last time I was able to gaze outside my inner chaos. Panic was inundating me to such a degree my chest abruptly constricted and vision blurred. I believe I heard my voice intone (perhaps aloud, but more likely in my head), Please, for God’s sake, have pity! All I want to do is sleep! as tears of desperation welled into my eyes. Then a bolt of fiery electricity tore through me—froze me from limb to limb, pinned me to the mattress as effectively as if a thick slab of steel had been placed on my back—and it was as if I was being pulled into the vortex of a black whirlpool in the center of my forehead. I was convinced all trace of my ability to be rational—every attribute of my personality—would disappear into the whirlpool’s blackness and that I’d soon be staring empty-eyed at nothing whatsoever, and that I’d be doing so for the rest of my life. I kid you not: I firmly believed an irreversible psychic implosion was imminent and had never known such terror before. A split-second scenario of me collapsing inward in a fireball of over-stimulation, being consumed to the roots of my nerves, flashed in my head before vanishing in a burst of silver light. But then a curious thing occurred: no sooner did I believe everlasting night was instants away and cease resisting its arrival—utterly surrender, lay down my will—than exhaustion overcame me and I fell asleep.
It makes sense, doesn’t it? I’d certainly endured far too much sustained shock for my faculties to continue to support waking consciousness. And are we not equipped with physiological defenses that are capable of suppressing internal disturbances independent of conscious decisiveness on our part? Will not our fundamental life-force, when alerted by excessive distress, step in of its own accord to shield us from ourselves? It’s perfectly plausible that our senses are fitted with biological fuses that are calibrated to shut them down, allow them to cool off and repair and regenerate themselves, when they become over-stimulated to the extent they’re threatening to irreparably shatter our nerves. It’s perfectly plausible that when psychic collapse looms large and seems inevitable our bodies will flee into sleep to avert it, grant us enough of a respite to enable us to recover and continue with our lives. Be that as it may, one might suppose that, considering I hadn’t verifiably slept in nearly three days and was as good as beaten to death in every last nerve, I experienced a deep dreamless variety of sleep. But such wasn’t the case. I had a vivid dream, as follows:
I’m in bed, wide awake, delightedly dwelling on the beauty—sweet visage, cascading hair, spirited grace—of the departed Clarissa. I can’t get enough of gasping at the lively light in her eyes, thrilling to the sultry music of her voice—can’t stop hearing her intone tender words—can’t stop yearning to show her how much those words mean to me, take her in my arms and love her. At times she seems so close and touchable—at times I tingle as if I’m truly about to wrap my arms around her and kiss her—but she remains unobtainable, restricted to the realms of sight and sound, and my yearning multiplies a hundredfold and I begin to feel as if I’m surrounded by flames. If only Clarissa were still among the living! I cry aloud and, as I do so, wonder if there might be a living Clarissa in the town, who’ll respond to my yearning and bring heaven into my life. Is it possible? Dare I entertain such a hope? And then I’m listening to the wind as it whooshes and whispers outside the windows, occasionally strong enough to rattle them. The wind steadily becomes stronger and louder, begins to unabatedly hiss and wail, and I start to listen very intently, without fully comprehending wh
y. But is it only the wind I hear? At first I’m not certain, but then sharper sounds begin to be discernable—sounds that, if I’m not mistaken, the wind would be unable to make. Or is it that the wind’s rattling the windows forcefully enough to crack their glass, rain pieces of it onto the floor? Or is it that the wind’s banging the metal jugs on the deck together, knocking them over, rolling them about? Or is that the wind’s gusting in the gutters so swiftly it’s causing them to whistle high shrill notes? I listen more intently, my body very still; I suddenly start, as a new idea concerning the mystery sounds occurs to me. Is it true? Are there cries outside? Is that what I hear piercing the wind? Again, I strain to listen; again I seek to separate the sounds of the wind from those occurring concurrently and identify the latter; again I start, when it becomes clear I’ve come closer to identifying the mystery sounds. There are cries outside, I can no longer doubt it. But what variety of cries? Are they those of a cat? Those of a bird? Are a couple
Dream Displacement, or Love from the Grave Page 4
