The Beauty of Speed

What's your recurring nightmare?

My theme is zombies, and it has been, as far as I can remember, for about ten years. I don't remember when the dreams started, but they seemed to have emerged in tandem with my entry into an adult mindset. I grew, and the dreams grew, and these days I have scarcely any nightmares that don't contain at least a couple of zombies. I'm a troubled sleeper and I tend to have a lot of nightmares, so this adds up.

It's not a recurring dream in the sense of exact repetition. It's thematic. Last night, for example, I had a relatively straightforward genre dream. I was in a large house in a pine-forested suburb somewhere. I had two companions. The zombies were outside; we were in the house; there was much running and shutting of windows. This is how the dreams tend to go: the zombies never get close enough to attack. They're always just a hair away, clawing at the door I forgot to lock, or approaching as I nail the last board over a hole in the wall.

Other times, the dreams are far less typical of the zombie trope. Say an average little yuppie nightmare: I've forgotten some major project. Or I discover an unpaid bill that I can never afford to pay off. Or something bad happens with a boy. In the middle of one of these pedestrian disasters, oops, here come the zombies. I'll be standing in a cafe arguing with a love interest, and then we look out the plate glass window and -- time to run! There will be an interlude of escaping, then eventually the dream will wander back on course.

Sometimes they look like movie zombies, all lurching and blood-spattered.

Sometimes, they look like normal people.

I've even seen robot zombies, and zombies that were essentially swaths of color.

It doesn't really matter what they look like. Just as in a dream you can see someone, and know in the instant that you're seeing them that although they look like a stranger this person is actually your close friend, all that matters is the understanding that they are zombies.

So what's a zombie? In the form I'm talking about, a zombie is relentless, dangerous, and singularly fixated on destruction. A zombie is also not alone: it's part of a sea of danger that surrounds the vulnerable. But most essentially, it's an inhuman human. From philosophical zombies to my own B-movie variety, the fascinating (for me) aspect is that the creature appears to us as one thing when in reality it is another. It appears to be a person like ourselves. Our impulse tells us that we can say or do something that will create an echo inside the chambers of the creature's experience and consciousness. But we can't. There is nothing there.

It's not surprising, then, that this would be the stuff of my recurring nightmares. In fact, I'd be interested to know whether writers and communications people have a greater tendency to dream about zombies than the general population. A world of zombies is a world in which I am deprived of my main skill. It's a world where I am helpless.

My life is a series of drastic changes, when viewed from the right angle. It can be absolutely chaotic, and I thrive off of the madness. I've reflected on this a lot this year, because several incidents have proven to me that I really don't like change -- when it's something external that happens to me. I remember having terrible depressions each time I had to change schools as a child, and that tendency to take transitions badly continues today.

And so it seems to me that helplessness in the face of change seems to be my personal zombie army. From the moment I was old enough to do it, I responded to the threat of change by upping the ante. When it was time for college, there was a long relationship that I wanted desperately to be out of but couldn't figure out how to end. I went rural and out of state, and that solved that. Two years later, a large number of the friends I'd made were graduating and I felt abandoned. I went to France. When I graduated -- perhaps the biggest change -- I moved to California. When a serious relationship ended, I got on a plane to New Zealand. When it ended for a second time, I went to Chile.

So it seems to me that the majority of travel in my life has revolved around this theme. By throwing myself into change instead of allowing it to happen to me, I've turned it into my favorite drug. Externally inflicted change is always coming, but I can always get that board in place just in time. Sometimes it nearly catches me, grabs my leg, tries to pull me down, but I always get away. As long as I can do it on my own terms, I'm not helpless: I'm the most powerful creature in the universe.

This is why I will stay in Istanbul until May. There are changes happening right now that will affect me but are not orchestrated by me, and every single cell in my body is screaming "plane ticket!" But looking back on the last few years, seeing the frenzy underneath the illusion of my own power, is sobering. I do not want to spend my life running away from imaginary monsters. Or rather, what's imaginary is the thought that I can run. Time is a zombie. It looks rich and colorful, like it has feeling. It holds my experiences and so I think that it can feel them. But time is empty, sweeping, relentless. And running doesn't change anything. I want to travel because I want to, because I've decided to, not because I'm afraid of my own ability to weather a transition. So I'll wait this one out in Istanbul, at least til May. Right now, I don't know how I'll do it, but I know it's what I have to do. Step one.