Dearest Rachel –
I’ve been up long enough already today that I can barely remember my dream last night. All that comes to mind is that I was one of maybe the last twelve or twenty humans left on the planet. It wasn’t a case of having to deal with tons of dead bodies everywhere – or undead bodies roaming the streets – as appropriate as either of those scenarios might be today. It was just the thought of trying to survive in an otherwise empty world. No traffic (actually, that would be a good thing, now, wouldn’t it?), no one to talk to, no one to open and run the shops… that sort of thing.
This being Halloween, I’d half-wish that I could relate it to you as though it was some sort of horrible nightmare, but it didn’t leave as much of a negative impression on me as all that. Everything was still standing, it was just… empty, like it had all been abandoned or something. I’m sure that’s frightening to a certain extent, especially given additional context (consider the abandoned city of Pripyat, for example – but in that case, it’s eerie atmosphere is compounded by the fact that it’s so radioactive, nothing could live and thrive there for centuries to come), but in and of itself, it’s not all that scary… unless you consider being alone to be.
It makes me wonder if it is something that I find to be frightening. Just last night, the topic of our study on the Psalms was anxiety; Pastor Joel was literally asking us “what is it that keeps you up at night?” Although, apart from a handful of nights when I wasn’t looking forward to the following day at work, I didn’t operate that way. I was too habituated to getting a certain amount of sleep every night, that nothing would have been able to prevent me from doing so. These days, even more so, as I have so little to truly worry about. Combined with the fact that I’ve learned to accept those things that I haven’t any control over (I’m not entirely sure that I leave them to God to take care of, as the study suggested, but I certainly don’t sweat the things I can’t change myself), and I think I can safely say there’s nothing that keeps me awake at night.
At the same time, it appears that, in my sleep, my mind is more than happy to remind me of things that I’m afraid of – like being alone for the rest of my life. In the light of day, it doesn’t seem all that scary. It’s actually nice sometimes to be able to do what I want to without answering to someone else about my choices, in fact. But it’s hard to go through the day, every day, without having anyone to talk to about the day. That’s overstating things slightly; I have friends and family that I speak with, after all, but I can’t tell them everything. Heck, I can’t even tell you everything, since there is the fact that others read all this over your shoulder. It would be nice to find someone else to take over your role. But as it doesn’t seem likely to happen, I have to accept that and move on; except that my subconscious seems to want to remind me that just because I have to do it, doesn’t mean I have to like it.
The nightmares that we allow to become our cultural touchstones are often dictated by our own external circumstances, honey. Frankenstein came about from the beginning of first technological revolution; we were starting to discover electricity and what it could (and might possibly) do, and Mary Shelley took that to its logical conclusion of raising the dead, and what implications there would be in that. Interestingly enough, its theme wound up being mirrored in a much later piece of media, in which a scientist sums the plot up: “[you] were so preoccupied with whether or not [you] could, [you] didn’t stop to think if [you] should.” Some ideas never die, like certain monsters. Speaking of monsters, the kaiju phenomenon, epitomized by Godzilla, considers the effects of the atomic bomb (and its successors) to be their origin. Of course, science and technology aren’t always the bugaboo (although it’s surprising how often they are, now that I think about it); sometimes it’s ideology, like The Invasion of the Body Snatchers being considered a product of the Cold War and the Red Scare nascent at the time. Likewise, you would recall the two great Doctor Who monsters – the Daleks and the Cybermen – being patterned off of the Nazis and the Communists, respectively, and the Borg of Star Trek being yet another take on the assimilative nature of Communism. And what with it being an election year (and election season encompassing Halloween almost entirely these days), who doesn’t think of a good zombie movie as representing the brain-dead followers of “the other team” now and again?
But then, there are those that represent more primal fears, things that are more personal. How many serial killer movies of our generation seemed to be based off of the morality tale of “you fool around with sex, and you’ll be sorry”? Was it meant to be a morality tale, or did Michael Myers, et al, represent some guilt archetype buried deep within our collective psyche? These are probably questions beyond my ken; you were the one who was more into horror of the two of us (mostly due to movie nights with your Dad when your Mom was working evenings), so you would know better about what each monster, each scenario, might be based in. Again, this is a discussion I wish I could have again with you these days; all this one-sided writing on my part isn’t nearly as satisfying.
And it brings me back to the vacant landscape of my dream – or does it count as a nightmare? Is that emptiness, stretching out as far as the eye can see, something to be afraid of… or something to embrace (in lieu of having anything else to)?
In either case, I’d ask you to keep an eye on me today, honey, and wish me luck. I think I’m going to need it regardless.
Letters to Rachel 