Maybe one day we’ll reach a point when all possible frequencies have been recorded, every combination of words written. Sometimes I wonder if it has already arrived. A frumpy man in the elevator told me he needs to do some housecleaning. “My closets look alcoholic,” he said.

I still have vivid dreams that my mother is alive; I find her sitting at a kitchen table in a tiny house by the sea, living under an assumed name. The house is always made of freshly chopped wood.

Voltaire believed “true prayer lies not in asking for a violation of natural law but in the acceptance of natural law,” and Kant insisted “morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.” And last night, a skittish young man with fantastic hair said, “God’s probably just some creep looking over us like a petri dish or some shit.”

Turned on the television so I could ignore it.

Record-breaking wind swept across England yesterday, closing bridges, train lines, and attractions. The nation tuned in to watch a livestream of airplanes struggling to land at Heathrow, and a gust of wind punched open the roof of an arena.

The trains started running again late last night. I know this because our flat is next to the Kilburn High Road Station, where four different trains rumble around the clock. One is light and faint like a sigh; the loudest is all judder and screech. At night, C. falls asleep encased a head-tomb of earplugs and noise-canceling headphones held fast with a scarf. But I enjoy the clatter and vibrations. There’s something soothing about drowsing next to a train station in an unfamiliar country, knowing that people are traveling at all hours to god only knows.

The noise worms its way into my dreams. Last night I dreamt I lived in a mechanical hotel that slowly dragged itself down the street. We could not leave, and we would never reach our destination. The hotel loved us too much to let us go. Every so often, new people would appear, and they were frightened when I approached because I was a ghost, haunting them. Then I dreamt that I drank perfume and had a minor role in a detective show in which none of us could remember the name of the president between Nixon and Carter.

A dream is defined as “a series of images and sensations that occur involuntarily during sleep.” Some definitions substitute visions for images, which may be a critical distinction between those who take their dreams seriously and those who do not.

I’ve always been skeptical of people who decipher their dreams or believe they are messages from some hidden realm, for they conjure the tacky aesthetics of the soothsayer or the drone of the dinner guest who talks about being present for the moment and worships rocks. My prejudice might be a knee-jerk reaction to the word involuntary—if something in my head cannot be controlled, does it belong to me? But like the trains, I’m learning to accept my dreams as a fine form of entertainment.

F.U.S.E. – Train-Trac

Dimension Intrusion | Plus 8, 1993 | Bandcamp

Temperatures in the thirties and everything is coated grey. I scan the forecast for snowflake icons, but no luck yet. I’m craving a good snowstorm like a favorite food.

This morning I came across a koan: When I breathe in, the universe is breathing out. When I breathe out, the universe is breathing in. At the time, this sounded incredibly necessary and profound. But looking at these words on the page now, I recoil. Why is the vocabulary of spirituality so tacky? Maybe because it’s dealing with vapor and there’s no room for concrete detail.

Last night I dreamt tangled, deeply plotted dreams about rotted airplanes, teeth in the street, and a gigantic man who knelt down to tell me he was raised by a mountain and that I did not understand how to live. I asked him if I could bum a cigarette and he tossed me into the sea. I swam into the dark until I was rescued by an inflatable child who cried like a ticking clock.

I woke up wondering if I would live my life any differently if I measured my age in days or hours instead of years.

Sunset: 6:20pm. A first-quarter moon. A high of 72 and another humid night that feels like the wrong season. Last night I dreamt that I painted a picture and could not tell if it was god or the devil because the image was too big for its frame. Then I had a horribly complicated dream about playing darts and spitting up green caterpillars. “We are quite probably dreaming all the time,” said Carl Jung. “But consciousness makes so much noise that we no longer hear the dream when awake.”

The moon was beautiful tonight, so striking that it silenced my idiot head chatter. It was a perfect crescent that dangled over the street, and I stopped in the middle of First Avenue and took a picture even though I knew there was no way to capture it.

Noveller – Concrete Dreams

Fantastic Planet | Fire Records, 2015 | Bandcamp

The first leaves are falling, and I’m eager for early dusk and deeper nights. Last night I dreamt of hammerhead sharks. I was swimming away from a burning airplane and they swarmed around me, biting away pieces of my back and arms until I woke up. I don’t know what this means, but C. says it’s because I’m afraid of hammers, which is true. I have to close my eyes whenever there’s a bludgeoning on television.

Carl Jung believed his dreams in 1913 about an Arctic frost that blanketed Europe were a barometer of the energies that led to the first world war. I wonder if we’re all having more destructive dreams in 2020.

This afternoon I jotted down the phrase “negligent utopian energy.” I’m not sure what this means, but I like the way it natters at the mind. While running this evening, I saw three deer grazing in an empty soccer field, which felt like dreamlife glitching into reality. If I want to believe in symbols and signs, today gave me plenty to decipher.

This journal will probably begin to decay through August. I’ve lost the thread of this nightly exercise. Maybe it will disintegrate into fragments, stray factoids, and orphaned sentences. Like how the other night I had a dream with an unseen voice saying come here and give god a kiss.

Lately my dreams have been all garble and grime without symbolism or plot. This seems to harmonize with the current gestalt. I often have the sensation of being forced to read the news. “Breathe from your diaphragm,” the experts tell you. But this year’s happening in the chest, an electrified snarl around the sternum. I downloaded a meditation widget that told me I am not behind my face. “Breathe through your back,” it said. I deleted it.

The rational world feels as if it’s slipping away, but this has happened before. The Surrealists believed this a century ago, and I’ve been thinking about their dreamworlds of flooded bedrooms, bird-men in the streets, and melting machines. Were they fussy about their dreams? Did they consume a specific diet of fairy tales, scientific journals, and newspapers to achieve the desired phantasmagorias while they slept?

Various Artists – Erode

Decay Product | Chain Reaction, 1997 | More

Last night I dreamt that I discovered a substance called ‘onesium’, which is the substance used to clean the soul and wipe away difficult memories. I also dreamed that each finger has its own consciousness.

There were more important things I wanted to write about tonight, but I’ve forgotten them. I wanted to write about the texture of living through this long summer of 2020, but the phrases and connections have evaporated. Whenever I have an idea, I must write it down immediately. I’ll never remember it later, no matter how hard I try.

But ten years later, I still remember the sight of a young couple marching along an empty desert road in Nevada. He walked on one side, she was on the other, and they both wore the saddest expressions I’d ever seen. I hope they’ve made up by now.

M83 – Highway of Endless Dreams

Saturdays = Youth | Mute, 2008 | More

New Hampshire. I dreamed such vivid dreams last night in the White Mountains, a series of bizarre scenes that arrived with the force of revelation. A world without the color green. A man who repainted all the seashells on the beach. My parents appearing and disappearing in a parking garage filled with water. These dreams had a heat and pulse that reminded me of this quote from Haruki Murakami: “It felt as though a fragment of real life had slipped into my sleeping mind by mistake. Then the moment I awoke, it fled like a quick-footed animal, leaving no trace behind.”

Last night I dreamt that I was on a massive ship with skyscrapers. We could not leave and we would never reach our destination. Every so often, new people would arrive and they were terrified when I approached, for I was a ghost, haunting them.

Where does the vocabulary of dreams come from? Each morning I wake to the imaginary babble of fully-formed news reports and television clips while skating across sleep—where is the line between a dream and a hallucination, voices in the head?

My writing is too tight, balled up in repressed emotion and god-knows-what. Perhaps I should jack into the subconscious life, have more confidence, and let reason fly. Learn to keep the pen moving without pause. Describe the umpteenth day of statistics and doubt in this endless spring, the brutal sound of someone eating an apple in the other room.

Last night I dreamt that I could not read. Every book was filled with gibberish. The words shape-shifted and flickered between shades of red, white, and blue. My mom appeared and handed me a small paper bag of medicine and told me it would help. We were the same age. “You look so old,” she said. “But I have to get back to my new family now.” I woke up.

A loss of understanding. The colors of the American flag. The need for a cure. This dream feels stupidly obvious in this pandemic season, but I cannot puzzle out its personal meaning. I’m left only with a handful of symbols: garbled books, a bag of medicine, and my mother.

In dreams, the murk of emotions, traumas, and truths too raw for language become distilled into symbols, and these images hold more power than the mechanics of plot. We might remember crouching on the sidewalk, frantically trying to gather the teeth falling from our mouths—not the circumstances that led us there. A broken mirror or the sensation of falling from a terrible height. Our dead coming and going.

It’s remarkable how quickly we recover from our dreams, that we don’t spend our days staring into space with haunted expressions. A line from Schopenhauer: “What is to be expected from heads of which even the wisest is every night the playground of the strangest and most senseless dreams, and has to take up its meditations again on emerging from these dreams?”

Suicide – Dream Baby Dream

Island, 1979 | More

Scene from last night’s dream: I told my beloved if she gave me a fork and a knife, I’d follow her straight to hell. She handed me a spoon.

More Americans have died from the coronavirus in two months than in the Vietnam War. Because we measure everything in war: crime, terror, drugs, poverty, and disease. There was news about a possible medical breakthrough this afternoon, a promising trial study that boosted the stock market. I keep thinking about 9/11, how one terrible day was compounded into trillions spent, tens of thousands dead, and a new surveillance state. Even if this pandemic fades soon, what will it leave in its wake?

Night walk to the corner bodega and I nearly forgot to wear my bandana. A man on the corner said nobody knows the pain of rejection like Jesus.

Last night I dreamt about a god who was angry because the noise of humanity prevented him from sleeping. This dream followed me into the vacant streets today, a city shuttered and hushed with only the occasional masked figure. I stood in the middle of First Avenue for a moment, losing the line between reality and dream.

A damp April day, the sky paper blank. Sixteen million people have filed for unemployment, yet the stock market is rising. We’ve built such a senseless hall of mirrors. If this pandemic doesn’t restore our senses, what will it take?

Sitting by the river on god-only-knows which day of this pandemic season, I watch a little boy say hello to a bird before it flies away. Then I dig the old lady who cut a tiny hole into her surgical mask so she can keep smoking her Benson & Hedges. After minimizing the threat of the coronavirus before becoming infected, Britain’s prime minister has been moved into the intensive care unit. In America, we’ve crossed the threshold of ten thousand dead. But there are signs the infection rate is plateauing in New York. The light is fragile, but it is there.

Dusting off some old notebooks last night, I found a diary about respiration, intubation, and oxygenation from the year I spent with my father, waiting for a lung. There’s an entry about a recurring dream from those long weeks in the hospital: I am on a small boat on a dark river, scooping lungs out of the river like fish and handing them to everyone I see along the shore.

Seefeel – Air-Eyes

From Starethrough | Warp, 1994 | More

These are long days of suspension. Brittle energy fills the city as we retreat inside for safety. Yet there are no storm clouds in the sky, no soldiers in the streets. Standing at the window, I watch the skyscrapers glint in the late afternoon light. For a moment I’m convinced everything is just fine. That I must have imagined the whole thing.

They’re talking about life disrupted through May and maybe August. They’re talking about mailing Americans thousand-dollar checks. They’re talking about sheltering in place. Sheltering from each other.

It’s the texture of a dream, this sensation that something has gone deeply wrong even though the cause cannot be seen. There’s an echo of those first days and weeks after losing my mother and then my father. I’d wake each morning thinking I’d dreamt such a strange and terrible dream and should tell them about it. It took several seconds, sometimes minutes before I remembered.

Hypnagogic. Hypnopompic. These words describe the terrain between consciousness and dreams, the rich land I’ve ceded to a tiny screen that I keep pumping for new pandemic information on either side of sleep. They describe those slippery moments when our thoughts remain tinted by the suspension of disbelief that allows us to dream.

Coming back from a run, I stopped dead when I saw the vacant steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. No clumps of tourists or people posing by the fountains. No hot dog or halal vendors, no old men selling watercolors in the shade. I yanked my headphones out of my ears, sensing this was a moment to be honored, the sight of a city so quickly emptied of its heat and noise. Fifth Avenue felt like a soundstage. A woman’s voice drifted across the street. “Surreal,” she said. And it was. But maybe the days before this pandemic will soon seem even more surreal.

Leyland Kirby – Tonight Is the Last Night of the World

From Sadly the Future Is No Longer What It Was | 2009 | Bandcamp

A haunting score for moments hypnagogic and hypnopompic.

Three recurring dreams: 1) a murderer who creates traffic jams in front of ambulances; 2) The “dishwasher episode” of a critically acclaimed drama; and 3) being told I’ve contracted a rare disease and no matter where I walk from now on, it will take one hour and eleventy-two minutes.

Waking up this morning, the world doesn’t feel much different from the illogic of sleep. Frantic spinning and slinging as exit polls dribble out of New Hampshire. The president is firing his critics and reducing the prison sentences of his friends. And with only one or two exceptions, our politicians continue delivering platitudes about “getting back to normal” and “remaining moderate” while the planet burns after so many decades of us being normal and moderate. It’s 65 degrees in Antarctica.

There might be a connection between the state of the world and our dreams. Schopenhauer comes to mind: “After all, what is to be expected of heads even the wisest of which is every night the scene of the strangest and the most senseless dreams, and which is expected to take up its meditations again on awakening from them?”