I am nine years old. I’m walking in my grandmother’s rose garden. I see my mom squatting near the base of a chinaberry tree. As I get near, she begins pulling at her face. The skin is coming off in shreds. I see the skull underneath. I start yelling, “Stop, stop! That’s mine!” 

I am 12 years old. I’m on a dark lane at dusk. I hear and feel sounds, like the vibrations of a helicopter just overhead. It’s autumn and black leaves are falling at my feet. When I look down, they are moving like tiny eels. I look over into a field and see a woman suspended in the air on wires with her arms outstretched. Another woman on the ground is controlling her movements by pulling levers on a contraption.  “Look” I say, pointing, “an electric dolly.”

These are two of the hundreds of dreams from my childhood I still remember. I’ve had vivid dreams all of my life. One time my sister told me she didn’t want to hear about them because they frightened her. I get it.

“I think and think and think, I‘ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer

Sometimes Bill will wave his hand at me. He says, “I can tell you’re in deep thought.” 

I was told years ago my face changes when I’m focused on an idea. It’s as if I become temporarily blind. When I wake up I’ll discover (for example) that Bill has refilled my coffee cup beside me. I can’t remember him coming to my chair, or anything at all about how it happened. He has even said to me he knew I hadn’t seen him.

These disappearances started when I was a boy. My dad and I would be in his truck driving to the river to check on cattle. Dad would say something and I wouldn’t respond. My silence would infuriate him. One time, after touching my leg to get my attention, he said “Son? Where do you go?”

It wasn’t a question I could answer. Not really. Sometimes when I surfaced out of the thoughts, they would dissolve or not make sense. This may sound like disassociating — a mental state arising out of trauma. But the truth is more mundane. 

Imagine a grid. A problem is marked as an X. Going out from the X are multiple rays that represent solutions. Almost always, when I go into deep thought, I’m mentally going down one of those paths to solve it. Often, other paths open up. So long as they remain limited, I can go down multiple paths at once to see how they might turn out.

This is the best way I know to explain what is happening. But I acknowledge it isn’t satisfactory. In a way, it doesn’t really answer the question.

“You can discard most of the junk that clutters your mind—things that exist only there—and clear out space for yourself: —By comprehending the scale of the world. —By contemplating infinite time. —By thinking of the speed with which things change—each part of everything; the narrow space between our birth and death.” — Marcus Aurelius

I opened this essay writing about dreams. It’s astonishing how little human beings know about a process everyone experiences. But we all know a few personal things about them: they are vivid; they involve people; they can be unsettling. 

Some dreams spin narratives as cohesive as a novel. Others are a jumble of craziness.

There is a dream I’ve had many times: I am in my home and I discover a room — sometimes a series of rooms — I didn’t know existed. Sometimes it becomes a nightmare as I realize intruders are sneaking in through the windows. But occasionally the dream remains a lovely one, and I think: wow, all this time, and I didn’t even know this place was here. And so close. So much room!

I’ve noticed as I get older, I’m often focused on the past. My memories are pleasurable, but sometimes tinged with regret. I try to make sense of my relationships with others. What do they mean? What did they mean? They seem like complete mysteries.

I believed that thinking would ultimately provide answers. But now that I’m growing older I’m trying to accept how much I’ll never understand about my life and the larger world.

Thoughts — I once imagined they were so important! — may spark an awareness, but most often they don’t accomplish much. Sometimes they lead me to rooms I didn’t know about — I feel thankful when that happens. But mostly they narrow then vanish in the strange confusion of a dream.