In the midst of nightmares

This morning, I woke up from a nightmare.  

I was screaming at a bus driver. The doors of the bus were open and the bus itself was plain, rectangular. White, unmarked, like one of those buses that take you to the plane if the plane must be unloaded away from the terminal, or if some operational issue or risk has arisen. An ordinary bus, yet out of place. Stationed in a park, waiting, no distinguishing features. although being unmarked in a city, and stationed, waiting in a park, made it stand out, and I wondered why it was there. White. One level. Doors at the front and middle. I had been crawling up a hill, but I managed to stand, so that I could see the driver. He was a fat, older man in a white button down shirt, with a silver piercing through his cheek, close to his mouth. He was saying to someone on the radio, “I only need six more.” On the bus there were Hassidic boys with the long locks of hair, brown and silky, dangling from under their small yarmulkes, over their pale skin. They didn’t look unhappy. It was unclear whether they knew what was going on. And I shouted at the man, “You’re a fucking Nazi! You’re a fucking Nazi!” Over and over, until I woke up. I was crying.

In the dream, I had been heading home. I was in a city, possibly New York, but a version that mixed neighborhoods, altering the arrangement of sides, parks, and avenues. Were they places that held a particular resonance? Possibly. Where was my home in this mix? All I knew was that I wanted to do something different, not the usual route home without detours or questions. So I decided to walk through a building I used to know as a young person. I pushed through the doors, feeling the daring in my rejection of routine. Of course the building had changed. Still red brick and rectangular, but now it had banks of elevators like an office building. No one stopped me, there was no doorman or security guard, which even in the dream I thought strange but fortunate for what I wanted to do. I felt like I was recreating some scene from my teenage years, even if that scene had never taken place in this particular way. I was looking to capture a memory of childhood. It was the whole reason I had taken this detour. I hit the button for the 37th floor – the penthouse, then realized that floor would probably be locked, like the elegant buildings of my childhood, where the wealthy owned a floor or two or three, and the elevator would only open onto a closed door. At the very least, anyone who headed for this kind of rarified territory might rouse the security guard, wherever they might be hiding. So I pushed the button for the 21st floor, and a light came on saying to go to elevator 3. It was the end elevator of the line, and I got on and three school boys came rushing up at the last minute and got on with me. I wasn’t unhappy to see them. They reminded me of people I had gone to school with, the same sort of clothes, the same well-cut, shiny hair, the same expressions – knowing, yet innocent, brave but heedless, unattractive yet confident. It was like going back in time, finding that place in my mind I had been looking for when I headed into the building. Yet there was a distance. If I had been their age I might have fit right in. But I wasn’t. But they didn’t reject me either, and I took some comfort in that, as though I belonged, back in a place I remembered and it was still there, still a part of me. As it was they just glanced at me and kept talking. Then the elevator went sideways, and I let out a sound of surprise as I tried to keep my balance. Then they did all look at me. I had revealed that I was a stranger, unaware and unaccustomed to what they took for granted. They were expecting this sideways motion. And through a window in the elevator, you could see that it was heading uptown, as though the blocks of buildings were a campus or a neighborhood, and the elevator a sort of tram or light railway that sped through it. Finally we stopped. They hadn’t pushed another button – this was the result we had all wanted, it seemed. Once the doors opened, the three boys walked out together, and I did as well. We were at ground level, in a park. They turned right, and right again. The doors seemed to open to the west, and they went around until they were walking east. In that direction, was a wide paved over area, and stairs up to a hill that led up to an avenue, maybe a quarter of a mile away. They continued going that way and I followed them. At a distance. I didn’t know exactly where we were, and they seemed to know where they were going. We were walking up the first set of stairs, paved stairs cut into the hillside of the park, when suddenly a sound like bangs rang out. Pops. One, then another, then another. I almost didn’t look around. In a city, they sounded like gunshots. Unexpected but familiar. But in my mind, I realized, familiar but too close, and I made myself look around. And there were three canisters of tear gas, smoking, that had been fired off about 30 feet behind us. “Tear gas!” I shouted. “Run!” And the three boys took off. I tried to follow, but in the way of dreams, I fell, and couldn’t get up. I was having a hard time breathing, and I started crawling. I’m too old for this, I thought. But I could see up the stairs and the hill to the avenue, and I knew I had to get away from the tear gas. 

I kept crawling up the hill, slowly, on hands and knees, trying to get away.

I was nearly at the top of the hill and almost to the avenue I had seen, when I saw an armored personnel carrier, black, with several armed men in camouflage with machine guns, leaning out from various openings. The size and sound of the vehicle was terrifying. The machine was enormous, and the men were eyeing the people along the avenue, as they progressed inexorably, cars moving out of their way, and pulling off to the side. To the right was a playground, and out of the corner of my eye I saw children and women, immobile with fear, staring up at the black machine as it went past. I thought I’ve seen pictures but this is worse. This is so much worse in real life. And I started crying. Then I saw the bus, with the driver, talking on the radio about needing just six more before he could go. He sat in the bus driver’s seat, hands on the large steering wheel, his stomach leaching over his belt, the silver piercing in his cheek weirdly out of place. The children in the bus, pale, skinny. And I was afraid. And as if I answered a question in my mind about what I would do, I started crawling over to the open door. I managed to stand, so I could see the driver and shouted, “You’re a fucking Nazi,” over and over again at the driver.

After seeing the black machine, I knew this was crazy, very dangerous. But I had to. And the people around me were frozen, staring as the armed men went by. Still, as though they were under glass.

Screaming.

What triggers nightmares, especially vivid ones? Sometimes I think I know. Science may have reasons, chemical, sleep patterns. I’m sure that some believe dreams are nothing more than chemical reactions.

But I can look at the events of past several days, weeks. The notice that armed lawless men were due to head in this direction. The videos of them terrorizing civilians. The video of possible infiltrators, embedded with the actual protestors. The streets the armed men went down. Neat, pretty houses. The last areas anyone would call lawless. The news that they were due to come closer to where I am. The threats on a global scale. The picture of the woman who was shot, holding her child to her beating heart, both of them smiling. Knowing the child would never smile in that way again.

There are so many shocking news stories; they have overrun the system as their propaganda playbook. Capture the attention of the news media, check. What was it that may have stuck with me? Not private offshore accounts of the spoils of wars, an illegal taking.  Not scared and angry people on a frozen island fighting for their right to exist without resorting to war.

No, it was the item about UPenn being asked for a list of Jewish professors and students. And how they refused. And how there would be some form of punishment. 

And then I remembered another dream from another life.

I was in a classroom and someone said, “UPenn – everyone knows it is a Jewish school.” 

I remember being shocked, and then wondering what to do. The teacher just nodded sagely, as if this was nothing out of the ordinary. 

The rest of the class was silent. Again.

But seeing this demand brought it all back. The advisors pushing for war, indifferent to suffering are businessmen, wealthy, out in the world. Hedge fund gossip, golf club gossip, the nasty little racisms and discriminations passed around like appetizers at a function. Rich, successful people believe something – so it must be true.  The supposedly irrefutable argument of well-funded propaganda. Write a lie on a dollar bill and wait for takers.

In the most recent dream, I screamed at the bus driver.

Maybe that’s the change.

To be able to scream loud enough to break the glass so people can listen to themselves. To be able to finally give voice to rage and pain and experience, and let neither repression nor fear close up the vast exhaling of a world that will tolerate being silenced and suffocated no longer.

Dreams lead to paths out.

The freedom to speak.