NICOTINE PATCH DREAMS

The old man in the abandoned Zen garden

I should state that most dreams I can remember are set in a dark, decaying world. Not always the same world, but always familiar. There is never a clear cause for the destruction. It just is. Some unspoken calamity happened, and now human society is in ruins. The survivors, usually myself amongst them, live in small groups with few provisions. It is vicious, lawless place. 

So like my other dreams, this one takes place in a vaguely-apocalyptic future. Everything is soiled. Every face is muddied. Cars are rusted, floors are water-stained, and clothes are tattered.

I found myself living with ten other people in what seemed like an abandoned YMCA. There was a large patio in front, that reminded me of the porch of a house I once lived in as a kid. In the dream, we all sleep in ripped orange sleeping bags on the dirty wooden floor. I had been living there for a few days because the van I had arrived in had broken down and needed repairs.   

At some point, I get into an argument with a bald man dressed in black. Either he had tripped me, or I had tripped him. In retaliation, he threatens to kill me. Paranoia sets in, and I begin to see him out of the corner of my eye. One minute I’m sitting on the patio watching a line form in front of the building, and the next minute he is staring at me through the window. I see him slinking in the shadows around my sleeping bag and waiting behind corners. 

Eventually our van is repaired. As I plan to leave, the travelers I arrived with startup the big rusted brown van. I wait in the back. Suddenly I feel compelled to walk behind the abandoned building I had been staying in. As I round the corner, I see an area blocked off by a 10 foot silver chain-link fence. I remember as I approached it, I could smell the spray paint used to paint it.   

On the other side is a Zen garden made of trash. Instead of sand, its full of cloudy blue and green water. Large bolders snake a path to the back, where huge stone columns make a square. As I set off down the path I see small crocodiles swimming around torn pieces of paper and faded soda cans at the bottom of the water. I finally make it to the columns and I meet a hunched over old man with kyphosis (his back is shaped like an ‘S’). He uses an oversized walking cane to shuffle around the crumbling columns. As I approach, he beacons me closer. He leans over and whispers something incomprehensible in my ear before jumping into the sky. I stair into the sky looking for any sign of him. 

I wake up.

What is this?

In 2002 I made a brash decision to start smoking.

My good friend at the time, a saxophone-playing music major in college, was consoling me on my recent relationship troubles. He had smoked on and off for 2 years, and the night we went walking, as I droned on about love and sex, he dragged on Camel Lights. Halfway through the night I asked him for one, confident my health would last forever and, if it didn’t, I’d happily die young.  

Around my twenty-first birthday I swore I would quit smoking by thirty. That way, I’d spend my twenties looking cool but hopefully beat the odds against developing a terminal disease. My grandmother’s death from lung cancer when she was fifty-five certainly inspired my oath to quit. 

Now, ten years later, I’m twenty-nine. In a move to begin quitting, I bought two boxes of nicotine patches at a local Duane Reade. They’ve helped loosen the coil that tightens in my chest whenever I go too long without a cigarette, however a common side effect is very disturbing, vivid dreams.

This is a journal of those dreams.