/dreamscapes
I wish I could sleep. Sleep was once such a blissful concept; eight hours a day during which no one can bother you. Eight hours a day during which the texts, calls, IMs, e-mails, and omnipresent iPhone notifications come to a screeching halt; no one — and nothing — can reach you. Eight hours a day during which the worries you have in the real world are secondary to the worries you have in the dream world.
Sleep used to come naturally to me. Once. Now, the only dreams I dream are dreamt whilst I am wide awake. Like the city I inhabit, I, too, don’t sleep.
I wish I could say I was being as productive as Fitzgerald, Miller, Poe — even P. Diddy would do. I wish I could write that I masquerade around Gotham under the cape and cowl of Bruce Wayne’s alter ego. I wish I could say or write a many number of things. I wish and I wish and I wish. That’s what I spend my nights doing.
I wish I had more money — don’t we all? Somehow, the modest bank balance I had back in Texas became a whole lot smaller in this city. I’m certain: somehow, the quarters I saved over the years have been mistakenly accepted as pennies. That’s the only explanation, I reason. I’m a frugal guy, after all. I don’t spend money aimlessly. Then again, my roommates don’t seem to understand my predicament. Franklin is their omnipresent friend, it seems. They spend money fruitlessly, stupidly, unthinkingly, and I must repent for their foolishness. The budget I keep, the money I save, is no match for the Häagen-Dazs Java Chip ice cream my roommate bought without my acknowledgement — and yet it’s my responsibility, my duty, my burden to pay now for any future bites I take of theeight-dollar ice cream that was the only brand of ice cream my street-smart roommate could find. As much as I attempt to hold on to Washington, Lincoln, and Jackson, they seem to escape my grasp. One by one. Time and time again.
I wish I had someone to share these sleepless nights with. A friend. A lover. A who-knows-what. A who-cares-what. Someone to talk to. , Truthfully, it becomes awfully lonely sitting on this windowsill, thinking thoughts of thoughtlessness. It’d be nice even to see someone else. So nice, that my eyes light up when I see a lone passerby walk by so far below. Sometimes, he’s drunk and stumbles to and fro, like a child learning to walk. Sometimes, she’s sneaking home after a late night sexcapade, having escaped early enough so she doesn’t have to make the dreaded “walk of shame.” Other times, they’re walking around, hand-in-hand, enjoying the ethereal time they share, the soundless words they speak to one another. I find a sense of companionship in these vagabonds. These nameless silhouettes who exist only for brief, fleeting moments, before vanishing forever from my life. One by one. Time and time again.
I wish I wasn’t lost. I used to know what I wanted out of life: go to school, get a job, meet a girl, buy a house and a car. Build a family, die happy. It’s all jumbled now. Heads is tails. One and one make three. Uptown is Downtown. East is West. Right is wrong; left is right. How to get back, I do not know. So day by day, night by night, I continue getting lost. Grades slip and focus falters. The goals I had, the expectations I had of myself, they fade away into nothingness. One by one. Time and time again.
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I wish I still had hopes. I’m certain I’m not alone in my yearning for aspirations, my longing for ambitions. How many people must have come to this city, this amazing city, with hopes in their hearts and hearts on their sleeves only to realize this city, this merciless city, will take it all away? Their hopes mean nothing here. Try Los Angeles. Or Chicago. Or Austin. Or Boston. Get out while you can. And those people — the plethora of dreamers — they cease to hope. They cease to believe. One by one. Time and time again.
So why stick around? Why stay here in this city? Because I dare to dream with eyes wide open.
I’ve grown sick of caring about my bank balance. I’ve stopped thinking of how much I spent this week or how much money my roommate extorted out of me for food I neither wanted nor needed. I’ve grown weary of searching for a companion for these lonely nights — instead, I seek shelter in the words of Ginsberg, Lennon, Kerouac, Baldwin, for their words, their voices, provide me the camaraderie I so desperately need. I’ve forgotten the road I was on, instead focusing on the road I’m on now. I’ll find my way, I tell myself. I’ve stolen from the city my hopes; again, I’ve begun to believe. Imagination soon follows. My mind roams freely. Jumbled words become coherent sentences. Abstract thoughts become concrete ideas.
The city at night has become a sandbox and I its architect. And I dare to build. Build fantastic dreamscapes I hope to one day inhabit. Build wondrous roads I aspire to one day travel. I build and I build and I build a world in which my troubles seem so vey far away. A world where I find solace from the problems that plague me so today. A world where I exist fully, completely. A world where I play without fear of repercussions. So, I build and I dream and I exist and I play.
I play in the playground of the greats: Fitzgerald, Miller, Poe. They all had the courage to dream in this city, this city that doesn’t sleep. I hope to follow in their footsteps.
They, too, dared to dream with eyes wide open.
originally written in 2013.
a version of this essay appeared in the 2015 Fall Volume of BRIO Magazine.
