dream - 02-25-02

a dream i had last night. a journey to the arctic. at night. an investigation of a plane crash somewhere out on the bare ice. and i was on another plane, parked near the accident, in some sort of command center. floodlit night and swirling snow out the windows, a vague sense of something enormous and awful having happened. a feeling that we were in it for the long haul, those of us there pitching in. an urgent desire to help alongside a general sense of despair.

but on that plane - creaks and moans and the feeling of something giving way. everything shifts and then out the windows it isn't night anymore it's a wall of ice reflecting the cabin lights. more noise and more movement. at first puzzlement on the part of those of us on the plane, which lingers even as we see the black water rise up. suddenly a sense of where we are in the world. miles of cold night above, miles of cold ocean below. and the plane has sunk through the ice. you know the fusilage will soon collapse, the windows burst inward. it's only seconds till your last breath, no chance to recalculate, to second-guess, to analyze the mistakes that brought you here. it's just over.

and i see it all happen - the torrents, the struggles, and finally the drifting bodies and debris. but i'm no longer there. it's a movie we're watching. we discuss the thrilling impact of it, this rendering of near-immediate, inescapable death. but i awake dismayed. what should've been a terrifying, viscerally-felt experience became instead some sort of aesthetic appreciation of a fictional tragedy.

more disturbing to me than the primary content of the dream was my need to remove myself from the experience of it. this may be a form of emotional preservation? but what am i protecting myself from? a fear deep enough it can't be experienced firsthand.

i feel cold. do you feel cold?