I don’t often sleep through the night anymore. The sleep of the righteous eludes me. The sleep of those without care seems out of my grasp. My mind is rarely clear, my body rarely at ease. I dream. I dream of times when nothing has changed, to remember, sometimes in the dream, that things have changed, find myself wondering why I dream this again and again. Sometimes I simply wake into a world so different than I dreamt in that I am confused. Some days this lifts as I get out of bed. Some days this lingers into morning, into the day..
Some nights I dream about tests ungiven, forgotten, incomplete – about my job being in danger. These are dreams of safety, or fear of losing the same.
Some nights my dreams are pleasant. Calm. Happy. I tend to remember these. But, often, I wake after them, as I do after the unpleasant ones. And wake often. Many nights I look for five-thirty to come soon so I can end the succession, dream after dream, or the lying half-awake, half-asleep. But some nights, not often, but enough that I know they will come from time to time, I sleep through the night, and the dreams are good, joyous, or happy, and I am comfortable, and all things are right and I want sleep to go on, that state of ease to continue even after the sun has risen, so I can lie there where all things are fine.
This morning I did not wish to wake. And, after waking, wanted to write. But I did what I always do – wash, dress, make my lunch, go to work, put off the writing until there is time, til work is done, til papers are graded, til errands are run. Often, the writing, the event, becomes lost. The energy dissipates, the muse becomes tired of waiting, feels unwelcome, leaves, By evening, I cannot call her back, cannot recall the feelings, cannot retrieve the compulsion. This evening I can.
I don’t know why. Perhaps having kicked wheat again, perhaps having learned to not eat late, to eat lightly, but I have been more comfortable the last few nights and, last night, I slept. And I dreamt.
I dreamt I was in a labyrinth. Dark, but not too dark. Greenish gray blocks form the floors, the walls, the distant ceiling. Wide spaces to wander between the walls told me this was large. Gargantuan. The scope felt as though it was encompassing of all that I have known, all I have been told, all I have experienced and all I knew to be the world. And I was deeply within.
And all was fine. I wandered one way, turned here, came to a wall, walked back, knowing there was no wrong choice, no bad direction, but only experience, that there was no getting out, only being within, this way, that way, moving on. It was calm. It was comforting.
Then I was at a table, tea cups full, in easy conversation with Joseph Campbell. We were talking about the symbolism, the pervasive, archetypal power of the labyrinth, from Crete, to the tribes of the American Southwest, from European monasteries to the sulci and gyri of our own brains, we carry the labyrinth in our psyches and our bodies. We discussed, unlike the common idea of the journey to the center being a search to find oneself, the labyrinth being a symbol for life itself, that “our own path (we) make with every step (we) take,” for the journey that can be neither planned nor defined. “If (we) can see (our) path laid out in front of (us) step by step, (we) know it’s not (our) path,” It starts without our bidding and, most often, ends without our permission, with the space between one of chance, discovery, of choices and unknowable paths, each decision leaving us, like Frost, to take one road or another, knowing either one would do, knowing the differences was at once minor and profound, immediate and everlasting, that “way leads on to way” and, even if we were to walk back again, to retrace whence we came, the road we take is now walked by a different person that the one who first laid foot there, as each choice changes who we are.
The conversation was pleasant. it was deep and comforting. it was the conversation I had always wanted with him but came not close enough to having.
Then I was back within the labyrinth. I was walking with Lee and we came to a place of decision – a crossroads – a choice of three ways. We could go left, or right, or continue straight. She stopped and looked at me and began to move to the right. I knew I had to walk on and I knew too she had go the way she had to go. And she did. I watched as she walked the first few feet from me, faded, gone. Nothing but an empty path and stone.
I was back again with Joseph. People have their own paths, he said. We can’t walk them. Even when we walk together, we are not on the same path. We can share space for a while, but when the path is clear, one must turn and nothing can stop that. That is something the labyrinth teaches us.
Then I was staring at the paths. Same as before. Left, right and forward. But I had a map in my hand. A plan. Turn this way, then that way. I knew how to go and I began to walk forward. Before I was through the crossroads the path in front of me became slowly solid, a wall forming where the path had been. My map was in my hand and my map was useless.
At the table with our tea again. Campbell leans a bit forward. Plans are fine, but take them lightly and be OK with letting them go. They may work for a while, but then we may find the way blocked and must discover ways around, or the way can sometimes disappear altogether. We must be willing to let the map go.
I wanted to lie here with this, to let it sit, but I felt the time I had was coming to its end, and the soft sound of the singing bowl told me it was time to leave my bed, to rise, and go toward my day. My day at a place I had never intended to be, doing something I never had planed to do. Which, I know, is just another way of saying I am alive.
Adam Byrn Tritt 