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Lucid!

John Farquhar Young

    Kirsten dreams and knows that she dreams. Lucid! Lucid! Be calm, she counsels herself knowing that too much emotion will return her to full consciousness. Let the dream unfold. She drifts through a great sunlit labyrinth bedecked with many flowers and suffused by pleasant powerful fragrances.
    Gide! Even as she dreams, she can identify the source of the imagery. A copy of Andre Gide’s Theseus sits on a shelf in her living room. She has been drawn many times to his version of the ancient tale of Theseus, the labyrinth, the minotaur and Ariadne’s thread. Its symbolism is both intriguing and in a vague way deeply unsettling.
    In the tale the slaying of the minotaur is a small and easily attained victory. The major challenge is escaping the labyrinth. Designed to corrode the will and weaken the desire to escape, all appetites are satisfied within its confines. Semi-narcotic vapors given off by smoldering plants suffuse the air. Intoxicated, the mind becomes immersed in pointless activity and becomes imprisoned in a labyrinth of its own devising.
    A wave of anxiety washes through her. She finds herself fully awake, her bedroom illuminated by the early light of a midsummer morning. A disturbing question hovers at the forefront of her mind. My present life - a labyrinth of my own devising?
    Her artist friend David, who taught her his method of achieving lucid experiences is dismissive of attempts to draw meaning from dream images. “The world of the lucid dream is wonderful, really wonderful,” he said forcefully. “It’s your world, your own reality. You paint on it, you shape it, you sculpt it, you grow things in it, you experiment in it. It’s a marvelous creative tool. It’s your canvas. But meaning is chiefly found in what you create - not in nonsensical dream images. Don’t let yourself be distracted!”
    “Am I being distracted?” she murmurs as she addresses herself in the bathroom mirror.
    After five successful years as a social worker in a mental health team the prospect of promotion is solidifying on the horizon. She is well regarded by her colleagues. I am making good progress in my work, she often tells herself. I ought to be content. But...! In recent weeks there have been moments of doubt. ‘Contentment’ and ‘good’ are such wooden words!
    And, at these times she feels as though she is not properly glued together, that her inner life is conflicted - fragmented - inhabiting in turn each the worlds orbiting around some difficult to discern inner point - work, home, friendships, doubts and ill-defined ambitions. And at other times, she seems to float in a languidly moving whirlpool being gradually drawn inward and downward. Towards a void, she wonders, or towards the clarification of some inner certainty?
    The imagery of the labyrinth dream flits in and out of her awareness at various points in her working day. A woman lost and terrified in the grasp of a psychotic episode (her labyrinth?) is sectioned. The wife of an elderly man whose mind is gradually being shredded by dementia has become distressed. (Dementia - a form of inescapable labyrinth?) So many different labyrinths, she reflects, trapping people in so many different ways.
    As she negotiates the evening traffic, she recalls her friend’s advice to avoid dwelling on the meaning of dream images. But perhaps, she wonders, some images, like the labyrinth, once encountered are too meaningful, too all-encompassing, too all-embracing to be ignored? Her thoughts run on. And perhaps, awareness of the strength of a symbol is the first step to escaping their grasp.
    But escape...to what? After a quick snack she returns to Gide’s book and finds Daedalus’s words to Theseus on the means of escaping the labyrinth. She scribbles down some words. “ARIADNE’S THREAD: the symbol of duty, guides the path out of the labyrinth. ...” Duty? To what? To yourself? ‘Go back to yourself,” the advice continues “... it is from your past, and from what you are at this moment, that what you are going to be must spring.’” I have a duty to escape the labyrinth of my own making, to escape contentment with a state of not-becoming, not-growing.
    A week later: “Why are you resigning?” Her manager, a small genial man in his late fifties normally so calm and self-assured is astonished. He glances at her resignation letter again as though to reassure himself that he has not lost his grip on reality.

    “It’s complicated,” she replies cheerily, hoping that he will not press her too firmly for an explanation.
    “It would be helpful to have some bits of your reason. I thought that you were very happy here.”
    “I was and am,” she responds and pauses.” But, perhaps too happy, too settled.”
    The manager frowns for a second then smiles. “New challenges are beckoning then?”
    “Nothing too specific,” Kirsten replies not completely truthfully. She is actively exploring the possibility of studying a fast-track law degree.
    “And without wishing to be too nosey, are you going to be OK with regard to your finances and so forth?”
    “I’ve been left some money by my parents, grandparents and an uncle. I’ll be fine. But...” she adds with a smile, “...no foreign holidays and expensive wines for a while.”
    As Kirsten leaves the manager’s office and makes her way back to her desk she feels as though she is walking on air. The future is open - wonderfully open, she keeps repeating to herself.
    That night she dreams and knows that she dreams. Lucid, lucid, be calm, be calm. Somewhere in the depth of her mind a new dream scene has been concocted. She is in the driver’s seat of an antique nineteenth century locomotive powerfully thumping across an endless expanse of an American wilderness towards some distant exciting but as yet ill-defined destination.

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