Читать книгу The Romance of the Commonplace - Gelett Burgess - Страница 8

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Ay, there's the rub! If we could but forecast our dreams, who would care to keep awake? In that, we are no further advanced than in the times of Pythagoras; still clumsy, ignorant amateurs in this most fascinating and mysterious game, played by every race and condition of men under the moon. There are some, maybe, who do not dream, poor half-made men and women, to whom a waking, literal prosaic life is the whole of existence. They stay idly at home, while you and I take ship upon the Unknown Sea and navigate uncharted waters every night. Then we are poets, dunces, philosophers, clowns or madcaps of sorts in a secret carnival, changing not only our costumes, but often our very selves, doffing conscience, habit and taste, to play a new part at each performance.

If we could but manage this raree-show, and not be mere marionettes, wired to the finger of the Magician, what tremendous adventures might we not undertake! We have rare glimpses of the Lesser Mysteries, but the inner secrets of that inconsequential empire are still undiscovered. The revels confound us; we are whirled, intoxicated or drugged, into a realm of confusion, and, out of touch with senses, reason and will, we cannot quite keep our heads clear. How many of us have tried to "dream true," like Peter Ibbetson, even to obeying the foolish formula he described, lying, hands under head, foot upon foot, murmuring his magic words?

Try as we may, those of us who are true dreamers can never quite accept the psychologist's explanation of dreams. Some cases may be easily understood, perhaps, such as the pathological influence of a Welsh rarebit, a superabundance of bed covers, or suggestive noises. We may account, too, for those absurd visions that appear so often on awakening, when one sense after another comes breaking into our consciousness, and when the mind, summoned suddenly to construct some reasonable relation between incongruous floating pictures, seizes upon any explanation, however ridiculous. But of deeper dreams, dreams logical or meaningful, dreams that recur or are shared by others, modern science does not give any satisfactory theory, and we are forced, willingly enough no doubt, to apply the hypotheses of mysticism.

There are dreams, too, so progressive and educational that they seem to involve a new science unknown in this workaday world. So many of us have had experiences with levitation in our dream life that we are, so to speak, a cult. I myself began by jumping, timing each spring with the precise moment of alighting from a previous leap, profiting by the rebound, and, after many experiments I am now able to float freely, even accomplishing that most difficult of all feats, rising in the air by a deliberate concentrated effort of will, even while lying on my back. Yet all of us, jumpers, flyers or floaters, must wait till that wonderful dream comes to us, after months maybe, to indulge in that most exhilarating pastime.

Children's dreams are (until they are cruelly undeceived) quite as real as their waking moments, and it may be that we shall, in time, learn the forgotten art from them. It is dependent, no doubt, upon their power of visualizing imagined objects while their eyes are shut, but while still awake; but this ability to call up the images of anything at will is as soon lost as their belief in dreams. Though this habit fades and is forgotten in the growing reality of our outward life, it may not be impossible with practice to regain the proficiency, for at times of great physical fatigue and mental exaltation the power comes back, often intensified almost to the point of hallucination. If we could train our imagination then, and learn to see pictures when our eyes are shut, these might become more accurate and real, so that at the moment of sinking into unconsciousness, as we lose hold on tangible things, the vision would become one with the reality, and, still imagining and creating, we might pass over the footlights and dream true. To most of us there comes a recognizable moment when we know we are just at the border of sleep; if we could then with our last effort of will keep control of the moving pictures we might go wherever we wished.

We might learn, too, to remember more of what happens in the night. We usually give what has passed in dream no more than an indulgent smile, and forget the strangeness of it all as soon as we are well awake. It is as if we had hurriedly turned the pages of an illustrated book. We recall, here and there, a few striking pictures, beautiful or comic, and the volume is replaced upon the shelves not to be taken down till the next evening. It is a book from which we learn little; its contents are not even amusing to anyone else, who has as fanciful tales in his own dreamland library. If we could, upon first awakening, impress our minds with the reality of our dreams, we might be able to recall more and more, and find that in spite of their incongruity there was some law which governed their visitation and some meaning in their grotesque patterns.

To one who dreams frequently, bedtime cannot fail to be something to look forward to, to hope and to prepare for with efforts to capture in the net of sleep some beautiful dream. May we not, sometime, find the proper bait, and lie down confident that we shall be duly enchanted in some delightful way, according to our desires? Till then we must each buy our nightly ticket in Sleep's lottery, and draw a blank or a prize, as Morpheus wills. Some say that the most refreshing sleep is absolute unconsciousness of time--that one should shut one's eyes, only to open them in the morning, with the night all unaccounted for. But no true dreamer will assent to this; he knows it is not so. I was told in my youth, that if I turned the toes of my boots toward the bed, I should have a nightmare. I confess I have never dared try it. But, rather than not dream at all, I believe I should be tempted to hazard the experiment.