千山鳥飛絕，萬徑人踪滅。
孤舟蓑笠翁，獨釣寒江雪。

《江雪》
唐 · 柳宗元

With the holidays and all, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a vivid dream I had back in August 2024. I’m usually not one to have dreams, much less dreams I remember, but this one has stuck with me. Moreover, it was one of those things where as soon as I woke up I knew I was going to remember it for as long as I live.

I’m being chased by some kind of gang in a warehouse. You can picture a Costco for a visual reference, although there was no one else present except for myself and my pursuers. My assailants are wearing what I can only describe as Haradrim style clothing, dark and torn, but what fabric there is covered in bits of metal, perhaps spikes or talismans or something. They are carrying blades and knives of all manor of lengths and designs, which are being thrown at me as one would see in a movie and leaping all around the ceiling high shelving, in a beastial sort of way. Scurrying up the beams like squirrels and vaulting over aisles like a feline. I’m stuck on the ground, running and ducking as weapons are being rained down on me. Somehow I’m not being hit by anything, but I can feel the the steel shreiking by and splitting the air inches away from me. I remember yelling in the dream, in between desperate panting, pleading with my attackers to let me go.

The warehouse is a maze, and I keep getting turned around and passing through aisles that I’m sure I’ve been to before. The shelves are filled with boxes, and while there were no labels or signs to speak of, I knew I was running in circles. The gang continues to circle high above me, darting among the high shelves and rafters. I would catch glimpses of dark shapes in my upper periphery and that spurred me to keep running.

Eventually I find an open bay door. I can see the light from outside, it’s a sunny day, there’s even a blue sky. I’m running down the aisle to escape, I’m almost there. Then an assailant springs forth right next to me, knife outstretched, and slashes me right across the throat. I can feel warmth on my neck, and something coming from my mouth, and a burning in my chest, and I collapse.

Suddenly, I see myself sitting on a bench outside. It’s that same beautiful sunny day, there’s a sprinkler going and green grass under my feet. The bench beneath me is one of those fake stone jobs that are basically painted cement, but molded to look a bit fancy with clawed feet and some ornamentation on the edges. There’s even a white trellis behind me, carrying greenery up and over where I’m seated. And I’m still looking at myself, like an out of body experience. There’s an enormous gash on my throat, and red all along my mouth and down my chin, but the blood has long dried. I’m just sitting on the bench, starting vacantly. From my viewpoint as the dreamer, I start to walk around and look at myself from different angles. After all, it’s not every day that you can look at yourself in such a way, directly viewing the back of your neck, or the pit of your knees.

There’s two of me now, so I stand there for a long time while I also sit there for a long time. For some reason, it’s pure bliss. It’s as if in that dream I’ve died and gone to some other place, not only free from those after me, but free from everything else too. I could sit there as long as I pleased, and feel good about it because here there was nothing else to be done.

There’s nothing to be done.

The moment that phrase entered into my mind, it suddenly became some kind of mantra in the dream world. I just kept hearing it over and over again while I was sitting and standing there.

There’s nothing to be done.

There’s nothing to be done.

In my internal monologue, I just kept hearing it over and over. At some point I wasn’t just hearing it but I was also saying it too.

There’s nothing to be done.

There’s nothing to be done.

I enjoyed the every syllable in that short sentence. Let the sound roll around in my mouth like candies, the tartness of the word “nothing”, the sweet comfort of the word “done”. It felt like I repeated that phrase for hours, said it maybe ten thousand times. It wasn’t me speaking at that point, the words were just coming out and the were speaking themselves.

The alarm goes off

I roll over, and the old wooden bed immediately offers an orchestra of creaks and squeals. That’s what we get when we travel and try to save money on AirBnB. After checking my phone, it seems I’ve only been asleep for two hours and it’s only six in the morning.

It’s a full weekend of mandatory activities to perform on behalf of my employers. It all comes back to me in an instant, all the social obligations, the coffees I’ll have to share with strangers, the seminars and workshops. That I was very stressed in the AirBnB and took some sleep medicine to help calm me down. That I waited about two hours for it to kick in and still nothing, so I took another day’s worth of medication. I eventually stumble to bed in the early morning, and pass out due to self-tranquilization more so than fall asleep.

But when I wake up, somehow I feel much better. I being to change, and smile at myself in the mirror for the first time in a long time. Really from then on, I smile in general a lot more.

There’s nothing to be done.