I’ve touched a raw nerve.

Is there some other kind? Sorry. It’s just that if we’re going to talk about my dream-life we’re going to have to start over. Maybe get up and leave the room and come back in different clothes.

What are you going to wear?

Something diaphanous. Cloud blue I think. You?

Do you remember them? Your dreams?

Pretty much. The ones that wake you, of course.

Why do some dreams wake you?

They think you’ve had enough?

Supposedly you’re being told something. But you’re not told what to do about it, are you?

The dream wakes us to tell us to remember. Maybe there’s nothing to be done. Maybe the question is whether the terror is a warning about the world or about ourselves. The night world from which you are brought upright in your bed gasping and sweating. Are you waking from something you have seen or from something that you are?

Is that the question?

Or maybe the real question is simply why the mind seems bent upon convincing us of the reality of that which has none.

You said at some point that the unconscious was reluctant to communicate with us linguistically. For historical reasons? Do I have that right?

Yes.

Would you like to elaborate on that?

I dont think so. Psychiatrists have trouble dealing with the unconscious in a straightforward way. But the unconscious is a purely biological system, not a magical one. It’s a biological system because that’s all there is for it to be. People arent happy talking about the unconscious unless there’s a certain amount of hokum involved. But there isnt. The unconscious is simply a machine for operating an animal. What else could it be? Most of what we do is unconscious. Turning chores over to the conscious mind is a risky business. Whales and dolphins have to time their breathing to their surfacing. So of course when they were first anesthetized for surgery they simply died. Which should have been predictable. The unconscious evolves along with the species to meet its needs and if there’s anything spooky about it it’s that it sometimes seems to anticipate those needs. It cant afford surprises. It’s one of the things that troubled Darwin. But the souldoctors dont get any of this. They’re Cartesian to the bone.

So how do they sleep?

Dolphins.

Yes.

Rather well, I would imagine. Guiltless creatures that they are.

No. I meant…

They sleep one hemisphere of their brain at a time.

Is that true?

Christ in a crinoline. As the Kid would say.

Sorry. Dont they sink to the bottom?

You’re forgetting that they’re half awake. Or that half of them is awake. The interesting thing to contemplate is whether the waking brain is privy to the sleeping brain’s dreams. Or does the corpus callosum shut down at night? Or why is a dying dolphin’s last breath not an act of suicide. Actually the one after the last. The one he refuses to take.