Good Night

Perhaps because we've mostly been working from home, and our circle of friends and family is fairly tight-knit, I haven't suffered much from Covid anxiety dreams. But last week I started my month-long stint, working as a 'Christmas Casual' at an An Post parcel depot (something I've been doing for three years now), and I had a series of nightmares, most of which I've forgotten, apart from that lingering spoor of dread. 

In dreams, the atmosphere sets the tone, or vice versa. I'm sure it's possible to have a sanguine dream about the end of the world (I vaguely remember at least one), while the most apparently innocuous dream can propel you into wakefulness, heart hammering. The last panic attack I had, around 30 years ago, was when I woke from an unspectacular dream, in which nothing much happened, feeling weirdly unsettled. 

The recent nightmares were, I think, more obviously nightmarish: witches, evil, etc., though the only clear image I retain is from the tail-end of the last one. I was backed against a door, pushing against it with my foot, unsuccessfully attempting to close it and bar what was on the other side: basically Darkness with a capital D. It was that physical sense, of being pushed against and unbalanced, that woke me. 

But on Saturday I woke from a wholly different kind of dream. I was visiting a small island far off the coast of Ireland, on which there were the ruins of a large abandoned monastery. Not like the austere Skellig, but broader and grassier, a kinder environment. Seamus Heaney was there, visiting with a famous photographer (Salgado possibly). They had collaborated on a project about the island, and published a large coffee-table book of poetry (and/or prose) complimented by striking black and white photographs. We talked, I think, though I can't remember anything of the conversation, other than it was congenial, as was the dream's tone in general. Afterwards, I regretted that I hadn't asked Heaney to sign my copy of the book. 

I wish I could remember more of the dream: its sense of being in a very special (sacred?) place.

The dream was backgrounded by another, fainter, tone: images and ideas that rose in the mind like great waves, tsunamis that threatened to drown the world, all the old dooms. But these didn't manifest to impinge or interfere with the dream's tone. The island was a place of peace and stillness, a cross perhaps between Inis Mór and Tír na nÓg, somewhere you could only get your head around by standing in it and on it, feeling it surround you.

Two images that stay with me: 

I was holding a large piece of black plastic, like the skin off a bale of silage hay. I lifted it and let the mild breeze take it, upwards into the cloudless blue, and I was surprised at how fast and clean and straight its trajectory was, as if I'd launched a kite in a strong wind. I watched fascinated as it quickly vanished to a dot then a speck then nothing, and I wished I could have filmed it. 

Later in the dream, I think, perhaps near the end, I placed my palm on rough stone, possibly a windowsill in the ruined monastery, and felt the whole island faintly humming, or thrumming like the deck of a ship or a living thing.