Pictures! Pictures! Pictures!
Often, before I learned, did
I wonder whence came the multitudes
of pictures that thronged my
dreams; for they were pictures
the like of which I had never
seen in real wake-a-day life.
They tormented my childhood,
making of my dreams a procession
of nightmares and a little later
convincing me that I was different
from my kind, a creature unnatural
and accursed.
In my days only did I attain
any measure of happiness. My
nights marked the reign of fear--and
such fear! I make bold to state
that no man of all the men who
walk the earth with me ever suffer
fear of like kind and degree.
For my fear is the fear of long
ago, the fear that was rampant
in the Younger World, and in
the youth of the Younger World.
In short, the fear that reigned
supreme in that period known
as the Mid-Pleistocene.
What do I mean? I see explanation
is necessary before I can tell
you of the substance of my dreams.
Otherwise, little could you know
of the meaning of the things
I know so well. As I write this,
all the beings and happenings
of that other world rise up before
me in vast phantasmagoria, and
I know that to you they would
be rhymeless and reasonless.
What to you the friendship
of Lop-Ear, the warm lure of
the Swift One, the lust and the
atavism of Red-Eye? A screaming
incoherence and no more. And
a screaming incoherence, likewise,
the doings of the Fire People
and the Tree People, and the
gibbering councils of the horde.
For you know not the peace of
the cool caves in the cliffs,
the circus of the drinking-places
at the end of the day. You have
never felt the bite of the morning
wind in the tree-tops, nor is
the taste of young bark sweet
in your mouth.
It would be better, I dare
say, for you to make your approach,
as I made mine, through my childhood.
As a boy I was very like other
boys--in my waking hours. It
was in my sleep that I was different.
From my earliest recollection
my sleep was a period of terror.
Rarely were my dreams tinctured
with happiness. As a rule, they
were stuffed with fear--and with
a fear so strange and alien that
it had no ponderable quality.
No fear that I experienced in
my waking life resembled the
fear that possessed me in my
sleep. It was of a quality and
kind that transcended all my
experiences.
For instance, I was a city
boy, a city child, rather, to
whom the country was an unexplored
domain. Yet I never dreamed of
cities; nor did a house ever
occur in any of my dreams. Nor,
for that matter, did any of my
human kind ever break through
the wall of my sleep. I, who
had seen trees only in parks
and illustrated books, wandered
in my sleep through interminable
forests. And further, these dream
trees were not a mere blur on
my vision. They were sharp and
distinct. I was on terms of practised
intimacy with them. I saw every
branch and twig; I saw and knew
every different leaf.
Well do I remember the first
time in my waking life that I
saw an oak tree. As I looked
at the leaves and branches and
gnarls, it came to me with distressing
vividness that I had seen that
same kind of tree many and countless
times n my sleep. So I was not
surprised, still later on in
my life, to recognize instantly,
the first time I saw them, trees
such as the spruce, the yew,
the birch, and the laurel. I
had seen them all before, and
was seeing them even then, every
night, in my sleep.
This, as you have already discerned,
violates the first law of dreaming,
namely, that in one's dreams
one sees only what he has seen
in his waking life, or combinations
of the things he has seen in
his waking life. But all my dreams
violated this law. In my dreams
I never saw ANYTHING of which
I had knowledge in my waking
life. My dream life and my waking
life were lives apart, with not
one thing in common save myself.
I was the connecting link that
somehow lived both lives.
Early in my childhood I learned
that nuts came from the grocer,
berries from the fruit man; but
before ever that knowledge was
mine, in my dreams I picked nuts
from trees, or gathered them
and ate them from the ground
underneath trees, and in the
same way I ate berries from vines
and bushes. This was beyond any
experience of mine.
I shall never forget the first
time I saw blueberries served
on the table. I had never seen
blueberries before, and yet,
at the sight of them, there leaped
up in my mind memories of dreams
wherein I had wandered through
swampy land eating my fill of
them. My mother set before me
a dish of the berries. I filled
my spoon, but before I raised
it to my mouth I knew just how
they would taste. Nor was I disappointed.
It was the same tang that I had
tasted a thousand times in my
sleep.
Snakes? Long before I had heard
of the existence of snakes, I
was tormented by them in my sleep.
They lurked for me in the forest
glades; leaped up, striking,
under my feet; squirmed off through
the dry grass or across naked
patches of rock; or pursued me
into the tree-tops, encircling
the trunks with their great shining
bodies, driving me higher and
higher or farther and farther
out on swaying and crackling
branches, the ground a dizzy
distance beneath me. Snakes!--with
their forked tongues, their beady
eyes and glittering scales, their
hissing and their rattling--did
I not already know them far too
well on that day of my first
circus when I saw the snake-charmer
lift them up?
They were old friends of mine,
enemies rather, that peopled
my nights with fear.
Ah, those endless forests,
and their horror-haunted gloom!
For what eternities have I wandered
through them, a timid, hunted
creature, starting at the least
sound, frightened of my own shadow,
keyed-up, ever alert and vigilant,
ready on the instant to dash
away in mad flight for my life.
For I was the prey of all manner
of fierce life that dwelt in
the forest, and it was in ecstasies
of fear that I fled before the
hunting monsters.
When I was five years old I
went to my first circus. I came
home from it sick--but not from
peanuts and pink lemonade. Let
me tell you. As we entered the
animal tent, a hoarse roaring
shook the air. I tore my hand
loose from my father's and dashed
wildly back through the entrance.
I collided with people, fell
down; and all the time I was
screaming with terror. My father
caught me and soothed me. He
pointed to the crowd of people,
all careless of the roaring,
and cheered me with assurances
of safety.
Nevertheless, it was in fear
and trembling, and with much
encouragement on his part, that
I at last approached the lion's
cage. Ah, I knew him on the instant.
The beast! The terrible one!
And on my inner vision flashed
the memories of my dreams,--the
midday sun shining on tall grass,
the wild bull grazing quietly,
the sudden parting of the grass
before the swift rush of the
tawny one, his leap to the bull's
back, the crashing and the bellowing,
and the crunch crunch of bones;
or again, the cool quiet of the
water-hole, the wild horse up
to his knees and drinking softly,
and then the tawny one--always
the tawny one!-- the leap, the
screaming and the splashing of
the horse, and the crunch crunch
of bones; and yet again, the
sombre twilight and the sad silence
of the end of day, and then the
great full-throated roar, sudden,
like a trump of doom, and swift
upon it the insane shrieking
and chattering among the trees,
and I, too, am trembling with
fear and am one of the many shrieking
and chattering among the trees.
At the sight of him, helpless,
within the bars of his cage,
I became enraged. I gritted my
teeth at him, danced up and down,
screaming an incoherent mockery
and making antic faces. He responded,
rushing against the bars and
roaring back at me his impotent
wrath. Ah, he knew me, too, and
the sounds I made were the sounds
of old time and intelligible
to him.
My parents
were frightened. "The
child is ill," said my mother. "He
is hysterical," said my father.
I never told them, and they never
knew. Already had I developed
reticence concerning this quality
of mine, this semi-disassociation
of personality as I think I am
justified in calling it.
I saw the snake-charmer, and
no more of the circus did I see
that night. I was taken home,
nervous and overwrought, sick
with the invasion of my real
life by that other life of my
dreams.
I have mentioned my reticence.
Only once did I confide the strangeness
of it all to another. He was
a boy--my chum; and we were eight
years old. From my dreams I reconstructed
for him pictures of that vanished
world in which I do believe I
once lived. I told him of the
terrors of that early time, of
Lop-Ear and the pranks we played,
of the gibbering councils, and
of the Fire People and their
squatting places.
He laughed at me, and jeered,
and told me tales of ghosts and
of the dead that walk at night.
But mostly did he laugh at my
feeble fancy. I told him more,
and he laughed the harder. I
swore in all earnestness that
these things were so, and he
began to look upon me queerly.
Also, he gave amazing garblings
of my tales to our playmates,
until all began to look upon
me queerly.
It was a bitter experience,
but I learned my lesson. I was
different from my kind. I was
abnormal with something they
could not understand, and the
telling of which would cause
only misunderstanding. When the
stories of ghosts and goblins
went around, I kept quiet. I
smiled grimly to myself. I thought
of my nights of fear, and knew
that mine were the real things--real
as life itself, not attenuated
vapors and surmised shadows.
For me no terrors resided in
the thought of bugaboos and wicked
ogres. The fall through leafy
branches and the dizzy heights;
the snakes that struck at me
as I dodged and leaped away in
chattering flight; the wild dogs
that hunted me across the open
spaces to the timber--these were
terrors concrete and actual,
happenings and not imaginings,
things of the living flesh and
of sweat and blood. Ogres and
bugaboos and I had been happy
bed-fellows, compared with these
terrors that made their bed with
me throughout my childhood, and
that still bed with me, now,
as I write this, full of years.
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