At some point during adolescence, I became addicted to dreaming. My dreams were so satisfying that I’d stay in bed as long as possible, sleeping and drifting through them. This lasted for an entire summer. Finally, though real life wasn’t especially appealing, I tried try to get out of bed. My dreams came to an end and the long march of reality began.
Later, I had a similar experience just after moving to France. My first apartment wasn’t far from Père Lachaise cemetery, and I went there almost daily. Père Lachaise is perhaps best known in the United States as the final resting place of Jim Morrison, and there’s always a crowd near his tomb. But there’s much more to see. One section, particularly beautiful because it’s unkempt and wild-looking, contains military men who served under Napoleon. Another contains musicians, artists, and writers: Rossini, Chopin, Musset, Wilde, Géricault, Delacroix, Barye (whose statuary decorates Mount Vernon Place in Baltimore). There are allées where one encounters famous dancers, actors and actresses, politicians, mystics—it’s like a Who’s Who of French cultural history. Walking there, I often felt in communion with the past.
I stopped visiting the cemetery which, like my earlier dreams, had such a powerful effect on my imagination. In time I made some contacts, realizing that, whether as attractive as the past might be or not, my only choice was to interact with what was around me. I produced a play I’d written, thinking it would be the best way to meet a lot of people. I was right, and soon the tranquil walks were over, replaced by a state of constant nervous tension: finding and dealing with actors, renting a theater, acquiring props, rehearsing, publicity, and so on.
Curiously, looking back, that “real” period now has something of a dreamlike quality to it. The same is true when I think over the events of the past—my childhood, young adulthood, coming to France, becoming a father. All my various past selves: the versions I once thought were my unchanging self, yet which have been replaced in an unending succession of selves. Can we ever truly live in the real world? And if reality can, in memory, be transformed into a dream, what does that say about daily life?
I recently read some short stories by Balzac and was struck by the utter impossibility of some of his characters living in the contemporary world. Men who, unhappy in love, become priests; women who enter convents; people with some form of solid morality. It reminded me of walking through a cemetery: these notions are dead to modern man. The only characters in the stories who’d be at home in today’s world are the ambitious ones, the schemers and their dupes. It made me wonder whether reading—like dreaming or wandering through a cemetery—might itself be a waste of time, divorced from any real usefulness. Even contemporary novels and stories will one day become historical, along with the images of man they portray.
There’s a constant tension in human existence, born from an awareness of the present moment passing into time. It resembles the contrast between the natural and supernatural worlds described in Catholic dogma. When I first heard the word supernatural in a religious context, I immediately thought of Casper the Friendly Ghost, Kubrick’s The Shining, and other cultural references. I wondered: do people honestly believe there’s a parallel world surrounding the real world? Isn’t that insane? A world of spooks and goblins? They call them angels and devils, but isn’t it the same thing? Is this really the substance of Judeo-Christian belief?
But when I look back at my life, I realize that it’s become supernatural—a memory, a dream, a walk through the cemetery of my past. And though one might argue that it has its basis in fact, what does that mean? It’s obvious that the only truth lies in what’s outside of time. The meaning of our lives lies in our connection with this paradox: that we are living illusory lives whose purpose is to give us an awareness of supernatural reality.