Nightmares (one more post about dreams)

Henry Fuseli, 'The Nightmare,' 1781 (Wikimedia Commons)

One more post about dreams, this one a nightmare:

I was travelling south on Division Avenue with my family past a crew that was paving and graveling north. My wife was driving. I thought I saw a child atop the gravel truck and in peril of flowing down with the gravel through a mechanical chute. I shouted at my wife, Stop! Back up! She did. And I shouted at the driver of the gravel truck to stop, but it was too late; two small children were being buried in gravel as I shouted.

It took hours to find them, and they were dead. My coworker, Jamie J, was actually atop the gravel searching when they were found.

TV and other news covered it widely. No one asked me to file a report or get involved, so I was an invisible bystander.

I was later asked by someone if I'd heard about this tragic story, and I said Yes, I was there.

The event became so troubling, I could no longer write, and so I wrote in this blog [yes, the same one you are reading now] that I had been struggling with some sad news and would not be writing for a bit.

And there the dream ended.

I've always told myself that if I ever must endure truly sad news, I wouldn't write about it here, at least not until afterward, and not directly (since a writer can't not write about everything, for everything informs every thought and word). You won't, for example, see me chronicle a battle with cancer. I wish all good things to those who do, but that's just not me.

I mean, if I started being that transparent, I'd have to write about the bodies under the floorboards, too, and I just don't want to go there.

[2014-05-31]

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