Darkness

Tonight I can't sleep, not because I don't want to, it is more related to the fact that I don't want to turn off the light. It sounds stupid, doesn't it? Well, I feel that way too, but I can't help feeling a little bit restless. Today, I watched with a friend of mine a horror movie and its images keep popping into my mind, no matter how much I insist my over-imaginative brain to think about some happier topic, it just won't listen to me.

Before giving up and deciding to start writing this until I was too tired to stay awake and -I have to admit- in hopes that after “talking” about this the fear would decrease a bit, I had been thinking about something the bad guy from the film said: that the common fear for all the small children from all over the world was the fear of darkness. And I started wondering why would that be. When it's day-time, with the sunlight, we can see everything around us and we can tell what can happen from what can't be done. However when we lie in the dark, in the darkest room where we can't see a thing, suddenly everything becomes possible. At 2 in the afternoon, it'd never cross my mind that an undead creature would be waiting for me in the shadows of the bathroom, but at 2 in the night/morning after watching a horror film, suddenly that situation doesn't seem so unheard of to my mind. Why do I insist on watching scary films if I know that later it'll be like this?

Damn, now I need to go to the bathroom... if you don't hear from me in a week or so, don't come for me. It would eat you too.

See you. I hope.

"It ain't as bad as you think. It will look better in the morning." - Colin Powell

The Train of Dreams

For some reason, today I remembered something that happened to me as a child. I don't remember exactly when this happened, but I'm sure I was still in elementary school.

One night I had this really scary nightmare that made me wake up covered in sweat and with my heart beating furiously against my ribs. In that first moment of half-consciousness, when you're still paralized by fear and you start to be aware of the sheets you're wraped up in, I could hear in my head the loud whistle of a train that announces its departure from a station. And in my childlike mind, still a bit foggy from sleep, it made perfect sense that it would be the Train of Dreams, that delivered a nightmare in my bed and after finishing its mission it went to another bedroom to give other dreams to other people. And I kept thinking it even after I was fully awake.

Even now, about 10 years later, although I don't believe it anymore, I still like this little “theory” of mine.

"There is a drowsy state, between sleeping and waking; when you dream more in five minutes with your eyes half open, and yourself half conscious of everything that is passing around you, than you would in five nights with your eyes fast closed and your senses wrapt in perfect unconsiousness." - Charles Dickens

P.S.  The picture is "Untitled - Design for the ball in the dream", a work of Salvador Dalí for the film "Spellbound", directed by Alfred Hitchcock.