Dreamland

A postcard from the edge of consciousness

A postcard from Dreamland, sent to me by a friend, years ago.

Dreamland is not a place for the casual traveller. When I was around 20, I began to have a recurring dream. I was in the English countryside, on a warm summer’s day. The trees were in full leaf, the flowers in full bloom, and only a few soft clouds gathered, not to threaten rain, but as a canvas for the sun to demonstrate its crisp illumination. The landscape was that of my childhood, with fields of gently rolling pasture bordered by drystone walls, and where they met, a little copse of broadleaf deciduous here and there, a farmhouse, a church, a gathering of cattle around a feeder in the middle of the field. Finding myself in Dreamland on such a beautiful day was a joy, an almost cartoonish joy, not least because, at that age, I had rarely dreamed at all for almost five years.

By the time I was 15, I had gotten in the habit of sleeping with the radio on. I lived in a small bungalow and my mother was sleeping in the room next to mine. She was ill, very ill by this point, and from her bedroom came the gurgles and beeps of various machines the doctors had brought to try to extend her life. The sound of them interacting with her body was an ever-present reminder of the fact that, slowly but very surely, she was in the process of dying. The radio blotted it out, but perhaps blotted out the dreams. By the time I was 20 she had been dead four years, and I was still in the habit of blotting it out, and still not dreaming. Dreams were welcome and rare.