I woke up in the arms of a nightmare. It happens that way some mornings. It stayed with me, although I couldn’t remember what had happened, only that it terrified me. I went to a meeting that morning as much because it is what I do as on account of the demons that had showed up in the night.
With all of that, I still sleepwalk through the early part of the meeting. A friend of mine began talking in his soft and gentle New York-inflected way. He was one of those rare few whose talk sounds like laughter, like the rippling sound of a creek heard through the trees on a sunlit spring morning.
He was talking quietly, a sweet guy with kids and a couple of grandchildren running loose in the house. I opened my eyes and sat up a little bit.
“You want to know how to handle fear? How to embrace your demons? You need faith. Overcoming fear is when you go out onto the street, find a guy who is holding. A total stranger. You give him ten, twenty, maybe more. Whatever you got. He gives you a bag with powder in it. Tells you it’s good shit, man. You get home or somewhere dark, you open the bag, cook that shit up, put it in a syringe and open a vein. You hit that m—r-fucker…hard. Right fuckin’ now. Now that’s an act of faith in the face of fear. “
No one says much in answer to that. Not in this crowd. One guy though, he starts shaking just a little. “Yeah,” he says quietly, breath coming out in a long, low, winter comin’ on kind of sigh, “…oh yeah, that’s some faith.”
“What did you say, Michael?” said Paul, who was sitting next to me.
“Nothin’, Paul. Nothin’ at all.”
“Hi, my name is Michael…” I say after a minute or two goes by.
“Hi Michael.”
“Last night I had a dream that terrified me.”
Photo credit
“Horsemen” h.koppdelaney @ flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Right Reserved.
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beautifully written.
I’m glad you have the people in the room on mornings like that.