For about 4 years straight, I was having a recurring nightmare.
It didn’t happen every night, but when it did I would instantly recognize the scene. It went something like this:
I am walking down a hallway inside a house. Though the layout is different to any home I’ve lived in, I know it is my house. Some nights the hall would have five doors, some nights three or four, but almost always two on the left and one at the end of the hall.
I walk down the hallway directly to the second door on the left.
I am not to open this door. I don’t know why, or how, but I can sense if I open this door something terrible will happen.
Yet I approach the door, seemingly fearless. My body moves on its own as I grip the knob. The pressure spikes in my consciousness as I hold the cold, blackened iron.
“Stop. Don’t open it.” I think to myself.
Like a defiant child, my body pushes the door open.
Some nights, the room inside is empty. Other nights, there is a table, or chair, or both. There is always another door on the other side of the room. Upon viewing the sparse room, my dread momentarily subsides.
“It’s just a room.” I think to myself.
The calm is temporary.
The pressure spikes again, this time a crushing oceanic weight. I don’t turn around, but I know the door has shut behind me. The pressure spikes in multitudes. The most awful dread I’ve ever felt washes over my body.
Then I’d wake.
The nightmare was consistent in content, but never in its visitation. I would sometimes go several weeks without experiencing it. It would always, eventually, return. When it did occur, the memory of it would not leave me all day.
The sensation of dread inside the nightmare was unlike anything I’ve experienced in the waking world. It was as if all my fears were condensed, and poured over me in waves.
I often thought of this dream. I wanted to understand what it meant. I started learning tarot as a way to help me interpret and understand my subconscious so that I might find symbols or meanings. In time, I started to understand that the house was me, or my mind, or my subconscious. The room and its contents, however, remained a mystery.
One night, I was at my friend Daniel’s apartment. He directed me in my first play in NYC and soon after became my mentor in both my art and my spirit. We were sitting in his backyard, drinking beers around his firepit. He was telling me stories about his brother.
I told him about my dream, how often it occurred and how each instance was nearly identical. He listened intently, silently. I could almost see the gears turning behind his eyes in the flickering light of the fire.
“You’re trying to access something,” he said.
“I know,” I replied, “I just don’t know what it’s pointing me towards.” I tapped the bottom of my beer bottle against my knee, trying to trigger the reflex like a practitioner with a mallet.
Daniel looked up and into the night. After a moment, the left side of his mouth turned into a half-smile.
“You know what you need to do, right?” He asked slyly. It was the same tone of voice he uses when he’s directing.
“What?” I replied.
“The other door in the room: you need to go through it.”
I have come up with a word to describe the feeling I had when Daniel said this to me.
Yomichigai (読み過ち)
The word is derived from Japanese words "読み" (yomi), meaning "to read" or "to perceive," and "過ち" (machigai), meaning "mistake" or "oversight." Yomichigai is the feeling of suddenly noticing something in one's surroundings that had previously gone unnoticed. Maybe the object is unremarkable, or maybe it blended in. Maybe it previously meant nothing, but with new understanding you take note.
In hindsight it seems so obvious. A dream about doors and what lies beyond them. Why did I never venture further? What lies beyond the next door? What would unfold in me? What would I discover?
I was always uneasy at the thought of experiencing the dream again. The dread, the lack of control, the unknown. Daniel’s statement swept all of that away. The thought of opening the next door overpowered any fear I previously had. I went to bed that night hoping, praying, that the dream would come.
It didn’t.
Weeks, months, and now nearly two years later, I have never had the dream again since my conversation with Daniel. It is cruel to me that I should be given such a revelation, then not have the opportunity to act on it. Where is this dream now that I am prepared for it? I was once inundated with it. Now it seems gone completely. Frustrated, vexed, discontented, irate, I yearn for the dream to return.
It hasn’t.
I had a dream.
It wasn’t the dream. In fact, it was hardly a dream at all.
Everything was black. It was a void. It was nothing. Then I had a sensation that felt like recognition. I felt that I was going to be told something. I was about to be told something of vital importance to me.
I listened carefully. Then, out of the darkness, I heard a voice say…
“It’s not in your dreams anymore.”
I knew at once this voice was talking about the door. The door that haunted my dreams for years then disappeared. The door I want so desperately to open. The secrets that lie behind it.
The door is not gone. I’ve stopped dreaming about it because it’s not in my dreams anymore.
It’s somewhere out here. Somewhere in the world.
I’m going to find it.
