Gadabout Town: What’s in a Dream?
For this issue’s Gadabout, we offered some dreamers a choice of three prompts:
What’s the best, worst, or most memorable dream you’ve ever had?
What’s the closest you’ve ever come to experiencing the sublime?
What’s your most addictive daydream?
Sofia Wolfson, musician
One of my closest encounters with the sublime consequently turned into an episode of cartoonish horror. Last year on an East Coast-to-Midwest tour playing bass in a friend’s band, we spent a day off passing through the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. I had avoided weed for several years after a bizarre (what we think was a) lacing incident left me briefly catatonic (I was 19 then and probably exaggerating the memory). But when the pen was passed around the sprinter, I couldn’t resist. I wanted to do Niagara Falls the right way.
Parking proved impossible, so our heroically selfless tour manager dropped us off, a van-load of exhausted, stoned children (musicians) unprepared to embark upon the sublime. The beginning of the walk was overcrowded with tourists, bodies upon bodies upon strollers upon plasticky ponchos, a claustrophobic herd moving in slow motion towards the sound of thrashing water.
And then suddenly we were at a railing. Peering over the ledge, on the precipice of the stereotypical sublime, I had never felt so small. At the time, I had been nursing an elongated heartbreak that seemed to instantly vanish against the landscape. The line between myself and the natural wonder thinned, then vibrated, then collapsed in on itself. I only returned to linear time once a friend placed a hand on my back to suggest we keep walking.
But the sublime soon turned sacrilegious. Did you know that the main street adjacent to Niagara Falls is a terrifying cross between Universal Studios, the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and an eroding state fair? We did not when we decided to walk the mile from the water to our hotel.
My world turned from blissful to paranoid in front of a Frankenstein-themed haunted house. The thing about getting too high when you’re as short as I am is that you start to shrink against your surroundings, so that everything gets thrown out of scale. Unlike the spiritual smallness I felt hanging over the water, now my surroundings were threatening to crush me. I watched the shoes of my friend in front of me as the promenade attractions threw light on the sidewalk until we made it to a small business hotel, the sterile walls of which were an unexpected relief. Suffice to say, I haven’t smoked weed since.
Ezra Kupor, Associate Editor at HarperCollins and author of Galleybrag
I have a recurring nightmare where I'm going about my day and suddenly I remember that I killed someone many years ago. Whether or not it was an accident, I never know. And it doesn't matter--even if I was just at the wrong place at the wrong time, I never reported it, so it's as good as crime.
The true nightmare starts when someone says, "I know, and soon everyone is going to know, too." Could be a passerby, friend, my mom, etc. And then the deep-sinking, gut-wrenching knowing that no matter what I do, no matter what I say, the deed is done. Everyone is going to hate me, my career is done, my life is over. The end is nigh but it's not yet.
I never get to the part of the dream where things come crashing down and the truth comes out. I'm just going through the motions of my day with a fist in my stomach, smiling and emailing and waiting for my life to be over.
There's always the moment in the middle of the night when I wake up and think, did I do it? And then, for the rest of the day, the thought lingers at the back of my mind like the cursed entry on a never-ending to-do list.
I also have a recurring nightmare that I've gone too long without a haircut and I look in the mirror and somehow I've detransitioned back to my high school self. Unclear which is scarier, tbh...