variation on a dream

this morning I woke from a nightmare. as is custom with nearly everything, whether it's a nightmare or a simple reverie is a matter of perspective. do serial killers deem certain dreams nightmares according to a postman's standard? to an obsessive compulsive's? to a priest's? to my own?

on the prophet muhammad's final day, he fell into unconsciousness and saw that he was in paradise. a voice spoke and gave him an option: he could live here, in paradise, with the voice. or, he could remain on earth, with his family and land. when he awoke, he had chosen the former, and he died moments later. if a staunch atheist experienced this call, would it be a nightmare? was it even a dream in the first place?

this morning I woke from a nightmare. in the nightmare, I was in a house of murderous psychopaths. (I will pause here. It both comforts and frightens me that you must know this image, this feeling. I am sure you have spent similar nights in your head. i'm sorry. but look at it this way: _________.) I was in the house's kitchen, throwing metal forks at one of these oncoming murderous psychopaths; metal forks were the only effective weapons, as stated by the science community at large (I had probably seen this on a stirring installment of NOVA). but I was losing. I kept missing; the forks were ineffective; the psychopath laughed at my plight. the psychopath, who was a woman, advanced with a knife, a small one. the knife was not particularly chilling. it was more the look in her eyes, or rather, the absence of a look. I called to my brother, who was sitting on a nearby staircase: mike, uh, can you help me out here? he did not hesitate: why don't you just wake up?

this morning I woke from a nightmare. once, my mother told me about a nightmare of hers, a recurring one. in the nightmare, we (my family) are trapped in a red jeep we used to own. we have careened off the coronado bridge (location: california) and we are drowning in the pacific ocean. the doors are locked and the windows will not break. we cannot hear each other's voices; they are gurgles and purls; they are imperceptible.

as I write this, my dog, an english springer spaniel who today has turned eight, lies next to me. her voice is lost in translation, a pant, a bark, a murmur of her soul, and yet I love her.

this morning I woke from a nightmare.