Lucid Waking
The days slip by like field mice
Lucid Waking
Sitting at the hotel-room desk doing his emails, Roger stopped and asked himself out loud: “Am I awake?”
He’d been in the hotel for three days. The negotiations should have started, but instead there were long meals and getting-to-know-you activities between the two sides. Lots of discussion about the industry and forthcoming innovations, but nothing about the merger. Roger found himself watching the hikers, passing the hotel on the path at the edge of the grounds, and wished that he was with them.
Roger eased back his chair and asked himself again: “Am I awake?”
He’d learned to ask that question in a first-floor studio, above a hippie shop that reeked of incense from downstairs. It was a Sunday afternoon, and everyone sat on beanbags. Roger was the only one in jeans. It wasn’t Roger’s usual environment, but this was a present from his ex-wife, a workshop on ‘lucid waking’. He’d pressed her for details, but she insisted that he just went. It was expensive and hard to book, she assured him, and worth it.
The session leader was a man named Kenny with bare feet, baggy trousers, and a topknot. At first, they all talked about lucid dreaming and techniques for achieving that. One was to draw a mark on your hand, and each time you saw it you asked yourself if you were awake. Eventually, you’d do this in a dream, and shock yourself into consciousness. You’d be in full control of your dreams, said Kenny.
When everyone took turns talking about their own lucid dreaming experiences, Roger lied that he never remembered his dreams. They discussed what that meant for two minutes, giving him his moment in the circle, then moved on.
Roger had never had a lucid dream. But he sometimes dreamed that he was having a lucid dream, that he was choosing what was happening. But when he woke, he knew the difference, that he had not really been in control.
Day four in the hotel, the conference table was laid out ready to review the contracts, but they stuck to the workshop room instead - hours discussing regulatory disruption. The walkers with their rucksacks passed by in the distance. Some more lawyers were due to arrive from the US in the afternoon, and a big evening meal was planned to welcome them. There would be a wine tasting from a local vintner at some point. Everyone was ready to talk business, once the time was right; but it now looked like the actual merger talks wouldn’t happen until next week.
“Roger, anything you’d like to add?” asked one of the directors.
“Yes, there is,” Roger pushed back his chair and stood. Buttoned his jacket as he walked towards the whiteboard. Once there, he looked back at the men from the two companies, some with pens in hand, others doing something on their laptops.
Roger took a deep breath and spoke. “Have any of you thought – really thought, that is – about how weird dreams are?”
Background
The subtitle for this email is a misquote of Ezra Pound’s short poem And The Days Are Not Full Enough.
Roger has turned up in a few stories, as a background character. He is the brother of Laura, a significant character in the fifth collection of these stories. He’s also going to turn up in the background of another strand of stories, about office work. I don’t have a particular ending in mind for him yet, but he seems sad in the three stories I’ve now written about him. Hopefully he will end up somewhere good.
Recommendations
I discovered Garbage Day during the Pandemic. It’s one of the substacks I pay for, alongside Chuck Palahniuk and Sam Kriss. It’s a regular round-up of Internet news by Ryan Broderick, a journalist who has worked for Buzzfeed, Vice and Gawker, and now makes a living through his newsletter. I love how Garbage Day summarises Internet drama, explaining the bizarre events on social media in an accessible way so I can watch from a distance. Being in my late 40s, I don’t have the time and energy to do this first hand, so I love having a regular newsletter to do this for me. While I pay to get bonus weekend round-up, the two regular free weekly emails are essential reading.