before sleep

1:Attention on Hypnagogic Imagery The most common strategy for inducing WILDs is to fall asleep while focusing on the hypnagogic imagery that accompanies sleep onset. Initially, you are likely to see relatively simple images, flashes of light, geometric patterns, and the like.

Gradually more complicated forms appear: faces, people, and finally entire scenes. 6

The following account of what the Russian philosopher P. D. Ouspensky called "half-dream states" provides a vivid example of what hypnagogic imagery can be like:

I am falling asleep. Golden dots, sparks and tiny stars appear and disappear before my eyes. These sparks and stars gradually merge into a golden net with diagonal meshes which moves slowly and regularly in rhythm with the beating of my heart, which I feel quite distinctly. The next moment the golden net is transformed into rows of brass helmets belonging to Roman soldiers marching along the street below. I hear their measured tread and watch them from the window of a high house in Galata, in Constantinople, in a narrow lane, one end of which leads to the old wharf and the Golden Horn with its ships and steamers and the minarets of Stamboul behind them. I hear their heavy measured tread, and see the sun shining on their helmets. Then suddenly I detach myself from the window sill on which I am lying, and in the same reclining position fly slowly over the lane, over the houses, and then over the Golden Horn in the direction of Stamboul. I smell the sea, feel the wind, the warm sun. This flying gives me a wonderfully pleasant sensation, and I cannot help opening my eyes. 7

Ouspensky's half-dream states developed out of a habit of observing the contents of his mind while falling asleep or in half-sleep after awakening from a dream. He notes that they were much easier to observe in the morning after awakening than before sleep at the beginning of the night and did not occur at all "without definite efforts." 8

Dr. Nathan Rapport, an American psychiatrist, cultivated an approach to lucid dreaming very similar to Ouspensky's: "While in bed awaiting sleep, the experimenter interrupts his thoughts every few minutes with an effort to recall the mental item vanishing before each intrusion that inquisitive attention." 9 This habit is continued sleep itself, with results like the following:

Brilliant lights flashed, and a myriad of sparkles twinkled from a magnificent cut glass chandelier. Interesting as any stage extravaganza were the many quaintly detailed figurines upon a mantel against the distant, paneled wall adorned in rococo.

At the right a merry group of beauties and gallants in the most elegant attire of Victorian England idled away a pleasant occasion. This scene continued for [a] period of I was not aware, before I discovered that it was not reality, but a mental picture and that I was viewing it. Instantly it became an incommunicably beautiful vision. It was with the greatest stealth that my vaguely awakened mind began to peep: for I knew that these glorious shows end abruptly because of such intrusions.

I thought, "Have I here one of those mind pictures that are without motion?" As if in reply, one of the young ladies gracefully waltzed about the room. She returned to the group and immobility, with a smile lighting her pretty face, which was turned over her shoulder toward me. The entire color scheme was unobtrusive despite the kaleidoscopic sparkles of the chandelier, the exquisite blues and creamy pinks of the rich settings and costumes. I felt that only my interest in dreams brought my notice to the tints - delicate, yet all alive as if with inner illumination. 10

Hypnagogic Imagery Technique

1. Relax completely

While lying in bed, gently close your eyes and relax your head, neck, back, arms, and legs. Completely let go of all muscular and mental tension, and breathe slowly and restfully. Enjoy the feeling of relaxation and let go of your thoughts, worries, and concerns. If you have just awakened from sleep, you are probably sufficiently relaxed.

Otherwise, you may use either the progressive relaxation exercise (page 33) or the 61-point relaxation exercise (page 34) to relax more deeply. Let everything wind down,

slower and slower, more and more relaxed, until your mind becomes as serene as the calmest sea.

2. Observe the visual images

Gently focus your attention on the visual images that will gradually appear before your mind's eye. Watch how the images begin and end. Try to observe the images as delicately as possible, allowing them to be passively reflected in your mind as they unfold. Do not attempt to hold onto the images, but instead just watch without attachment or desire for action. While doing this, try to take the perspective of a detached observer as much as possible. At first you will see a sequence of disconnected, fleeting patterns and images. The images will gradually develop into scenes that become more and more complex, finally joining into extended sequences.

3. Enter the dream

When the imagery becomes a moving, vivid scenario, you should allow yourself to be passively drawn into the dream world. Do not try to actively enter the dream scene,

but instead continue to take a detached interest in the imagery. Let your involvement with what is happening draw you into the dream. But be careful of too much involvement and too little attention. Don't forget that you are dreaming now!

Commentary

Probably the most difficult part of this technique to master is entering the dream at Step 3. The challenge is to develop a delicate vigilance, an unobtrusive observer perspective, from which you let yourself be drawn into the dream. As Paul Tholey has emphasized, "It is not desirable to want actively to enter into the scenery,

since such an intention as a rule causes the scenery to disappear." 11 A passive volition similar to that described in the section on autosuggestion in the previous chapter is required: in Tholey's words, "Instead of actively wanting to enter into the scenery, the subject should attempt to let himself be carried into it passively." 12 A Tibetan teacher advises a similar frame of mind: "While delicately observing the mind, lead it gently into the dream state, as though you were leading a child by the hand." 13

Another risk is that, once you have entered into the dream, the world can seem so realistic that it is easy to lose lucidity, as happened in the beginning of Rapport's WILD described above. As insurance in case this happens, Tholey recommends that you resolve to carry out a particular action in the dream, so that if you momentarily lose lucidity, you may remember your intention to carry out the action and thereby regain lucidity.
~ Stephen LaBerge, Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming,

* WISDOM TROVE *

1:He was thirty-one now, not too old, but old enough to be lonely. He hadn't dated since he'd been back here, hadn't met anyone who remotely interested him. It was his own fault, he knew. There was something that kept a distance between him and any woman who started to get close, something he wasn't sure he could change even if he tried. And sometimes in the moments right before sleep came, he wondered if he was destined to be alone forever. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove

* NEWFULLDB 2.4M *

1:Dawn comes before sleep does. ~ Suzanne Collins,

2:...How terrible, those dreams before sleep were—the worse kind, mixing hope with despair... ~ John Geddes,

3:the old with the young, the decrepit with the lusty—all equal before sleep, death's brother. ~ Joseph Conrad,

4:You see, a story is not just a thing told to a child before sleep. A story is control. ~ Roshani Chokshi,

5:Sometime before sleep it occurred to me that the true nature of being without might mean never knowing what one lacked. ~ Tosca Lee,

6:In the final seconds before sleep, I wish I could go back and undo everything, give those little girls another chance. ~ Emily Giffin,

7:If one meditates keenly on the state that prevails at the end of waking and just before sleep, one attains unending happiness. ~ Maharshi,

8:the men, the women, the children; the old with the young, the decrepit with the lusty—all equal before sleep, death's brother. ~ Joseph Conrad,

9:...the easy way he moved his body, old ways, disturbing ways, ways that draw you in. Ways that whisper to you in the final moment before sleep comes, when the barriers have fallen. ~ Robert James Waller,

10:What could never be endured, it turned out, was the last swathe of time before sleep came, the path from larger day to huger night, a little death when the mind was still alive and fluttering. Thus ~ Martin Amis,

11:His eyes looked directly at her, and she felt something jump inside. The eyes, the voice, the face, the silver hair, the easy way he moved his body, old ways, disturbing ways, ways that draw you in. Ways that whisper to you in the final moment before sleep comes, when the barriers have fallen. ~ Robert James Waller,

12:...and on some nights in bed, in that moment before sleep erased the day, I would picture the way the sky in Lapland looked the morning I left, how the train had sped south beneath a sky that was brighter than it had been in weeks. It had pulsed with reds and oranges, as though hiding a beating heart. ~ Vendela Vida,

13:As I listen to Darcy breathing in the dark beside me, I wonder how we got to this. How we could be in love with the same person. How I coudl be sabotaging my best friend's engagement. In the final seconds before sleep, I wish I could go back and undo everything, give those little girls another chance. ~ Emily Giffin,

14:Moments before sleep are when she feels most alive, leaping across fragments of the day, bringing each moment into the bed with her like a child with schoolbooks and pencils. The day seems to have no order until these times, which are like a ledger for her, her body full of stories and situations. ~ Michael Ondaatje,

15:Also, some dreams can incorporate events that happened a few hours earlier, just before sleep. But dreams mostly incorporate memories that are a few days old. For example, experiments have shown that if you put rose-colored glasses on a person, it takes a few days before the dreams become rose-colored as well. ~ Michio Kaku,

16:Dark here comes quickly. He undresses and slips into his silky cold sleeping bag. Up above, the clouds mask the stars and the moon alone glows like a strange pearl. Somewhere, he thinks, cherishing his last thought before sleep, somewhere, out there, the last tiger stands with her back to the rising wind and slowly shakes herself awake. ~ Julia Leigh,

17:One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six. ~ Dylan Thomas,

18:What one needs to do is to keep this correct thinking up and to make it a part and parcel of personality. For that you need to keep reminding yourself at continuous intervals. Write your aims or positive ideas in your diary and read them before sleep and after getting up in morning. You can paste motivational posters in your living room which will give you positive energy. ~ Pradeep Chaswal,

19:My older sister has entire kingdoms inside of her, and some of them are only accessible at certain seasons, in certain kinds of weather. One such melting occurs in summer rain, at midnight, during the vine-green breathing time right before sleep. You have to ask the right question, throw the right rope bridge, to get there-and then bolt across the chasm between you, before your bridge collapses. ~ Karen Russell,

20:Before I left Alaka, I told Vikram I didn’t know myself. Now I was
staring at the depths of what that meant. Heroine. Savior. Villain. What were those words but different fistfuls of a tale that all depended on who was doing the telling? You see, a story is not just a thing told to a child before sleep. A story is control. I saw it now. Felt the talons of that truth scrape through me. ~ Roshani Chokshi,

21:Everyday he got up. Before sleep wore off, he was who he used to be. Then, as his consciousness woke, it was as if poison seeped in. At first he couldn't even get up. He lay there under a heavy weight. But then only movment could save him, and he moved and he moved and he moved, no movement being enough to make up for it. The guilt on him, the hand of God pressing down on him, saying, You were not there when your daughter needed you. ~ Alice Sebold,

22:You cannot break me with a tale, brother.”

“You’re happy, aren’t you? You’re loved. You love others. I think people are convinced that if you asked the sun not to rise, it would stand down for you. But there’s only one story that people like better than a rise to fame—a fall from grace. And I can make it swift. And I can take all this away. You see, a story is not just a thing told to a child before sleep. A story is control. ~ Roshani Chokshi,

23:people who learned finger movements right before sleep versus those who learned these movements but did not go to sleep immediately after their lesson. The Brown scientists were able to show that learners who “slept on it” showed better accuracy than those who did not, and this translated into more measurable activity during slow-wave sleep in the supplementary parts of the motor cortex responsible for coordinating patterned activity. ~ Frances E Jensen,

24:He was thirty-one now, not too old, but old enough to be lonely. He hadn't dated since he'd been back here, hadn't met anyone who remotely interested him. It was his own fault, he knew. There was something that kept a distance between him and any woman who started to get close, something he wasn't sure he could change even if he tried. And sometimes in the moments right before sleep came, he wondered if he was destined to be alone forever. ~ Nicholas Sparks,

25:Hyacinth, who wept before sleep, had wept that night; he had wept too—had wept in joy and pain, and in joy at his pain. When tears were done and their heads rested on one pillow, she had said that no man had ever wept with her before. Two floors below them, their reflected images knelt in the fishpond at Thelxiepeia’s feet, subsistent but invisible. There she would weep for him longer than they lived. He lowered his naked body into a rising pool, warm and scarcely less romantic. ~ Gene Wolfe,

26:Hyacinth, who wept before sleep, had wept that night; he had wept too—had wept in joy and pain, and in joy at his pain. When tears were done and their heads rested on one pillow, she had said that no man had ever wept with her before. Two floors below them, their reflected images knelt in the fishpond at Thelxiepeia’s feet, subsistent but invisible. There she would weep for him longer than they lived. He lowered his naked body into a rising pool, warm and scarcely less romantic. Ermine ~ Gene Wolfe,

27:Hyacinth, who wept before sleep, had wept that night; he had wept too—had wept in joy and pain, and in joy at his pain. When tears were done and their heads rested on one pillow, she had said that no man had ever wept with her before. Two floors below them, their reflected images knelt in the fishpond at Thelxiepeia’s feet, subsistent but invisible. There she would weep for him longer than they lived. He lowered his naked body into a rising pool, warm and scarcely less romantic. Ermine’s, ~ Gene Wolfe,

28:Then from those profound slumbers we awake in a dawn, not knowing who we are, being nobody, newly born, ready for anything, the brain emptied of that past which was life until then. And perhaps it is more wonderful still when our landing at the waking-point is abrupt and the thoughts of our sleep, hidden by a cloak of oblivion, have no time to return to us gradually, before sleep ceases. Then, from the black storm through which we seem to have passed (but we do not even say we), we emerge prostrate, without a thought, a we that is void of content. ~ Marcel Proust,

29:In his essay,Agastya had said that his real ambition was to be a domesticated male stray dog because they lived the best life.They were assured of food,and because they were stray they didn't have to guard a house or beg or shake paws or fetch trifles or be clean or anything similarly meaningless to earn their food.They were servile and sycophantic when hungry;once fed,and before sleep,they wagged their tails perfunctorily whenever their hosts passes,as an investment for future meals.A stray dog was free,he slept a lot,barked unexpectedly and only when he wanted to,and got a lot of sex. ~ Upamanyu Chatterjee,

30:He turned his head on the pillow, looked sleepily at his beautiful captive, and gave her his most blinding smile. “’ Tis dreamin’ of that kiss, I’ll be,” he said, with a pointed sigh. Her smile vanished and in the gathering light, he saw the quick stains of color on her cheeks. “Go to sleep, Captain O’ Devir,” she said tightly and rising, went to sit at the windows at the stern, putting distance between them. The rising sun painted the curve of her forehead, her pert nose and her lovely chin, and the strikingly beautiful image of her cast-in-light profile was the last Ruaidri knew before sleep claimed him. ~ Danelle Harmon,

31:Prophet Muhammad (s) says: “Whenever you go to bed, perform ablution like that for the prayer, lie or your right side and say: ‘O Allah! I surrender to You and entrust all my affairs to You and depend upon You for Your Blessings both with hope and fear of You. There is no fleeing from You, and there is no place of protection and safety except with You O Allah! I believe in Your Book which You have revealed and in Your Prophet whom You have sent.’ Then if you die on that very night, you will die with faith (i.e. the religion of Islam). Let the aforesaid words be your last utterance [before sleep]”. [Bukhari] ~ Mohammed Abu Productive Faris,

32:Not only does sleep maintain those memories you have successfully learned before bed (“the vision that was planted in my brain / Still remains”), but it will even salvage those that appeared to have been lost soon after learning. In other words, following a night of sleep you regain access to memories that you could not retrieve before sleep. Like a computer hard drive where some files have become corrupted and inaccessible, sleep offers a recovery service at night. Having repaired those memory items, rescuing them from the clutches of forgetting, you awake the next morning able to locate and retrieve those once unavailable memory files with ease and precision. ~ Matthew Walker,

33:Before Sleep
Now that you lie
In London afar,
And may sleep longer
Though lonelier,
For I shall not wake you
With a nightmare,
Heaven plant such peace in us
As if no parting stretched between us.
The world revolves
And is evil;
God's image is
Wormeaten by the devil;
May the good angel
Have no rival
By our beds, and we lie curled
At the sound unmoving centre of the world.
In our good nights
When we were together,
We made, in that stillness
Where we loved each other,
A new being, of both
Yet above either:
So, when I cannot share your sleep,
Into this being, half yours, I creep.
~ Anne Barbara Ridler,

34:Prime numbers are divisible only by 1 and by themselves. They hold their place in the infinite series of natural numbers, squashed, like all numbers, between two others, but one step further than the rest. They are suspicious, solitary numbers, which is why Mattia thought they were wonderful. Sometimes he thought that they had ended up in that sequence by mistake, that they'd been trapped, like pearls strung on a necklace. Other times he suspected that they too would have preferred to be like all others, just ordinary numbers, but for some reason they couldn't do it. This second thought struck him mostly at night, in the chaotic interweaving of images that comes before sleep, when the mind is too weak to tell itself lies. ~ Paolo Giordano,

35:Everything happens at night.

The world changes, the shadows grow, there's secrecy and privacy in dark places. First kiss at night, by the monkey bars and the old swings that the children and their parents have vacated; second, longer kiss, by the bike stands, swirl of dust around feet in the dry summer air. Awkward words, like secrets just waiting to be broken, the struggle to find the right ones, the heady fear of exposure --- what if, what if --- the joy when the words are returned. Love, in the parkette, while the moon waxes and the clouds pass.

Promises at night. Not first promises --- those are so old they can't be remembered --- but new promises, sharp and biting; they almost hurt to say, but it's a good hurt. Dreams at night, before sleep, and dreams during sleep.

Everything, always, happens at night. ~ Michelle Sagara,

36:Prayer's Before Sleep
Straight A's on arithmetic quizzes, your cheek gets ground
into the concrete down here, Sir. Thank You
for sending only Your smallest monsters to find me
and Your giant silence, thank You for that, within it
I accept that the Beatles won't sing in my rec room ever
and my gerbil will not unstiffen and nibble through his shoebox.
My teeth--I'd forgotten them--the braces are working,
don't worry, and my hands, my back, no problem. I will bear
Your son across Thornton creek when You send Him
should You lower Him into my neighborhood. Let
the capsule of astronauts splash down gently,
let me stay friends forever with William and Phil
and with Jenny, a discovery of late, by Your grace.
If Dad and Mom laughing today is Your doing,
thanks. My sister's no bother, really. You haven't yet
taken my soul in my sleep, You let me lie in my bed like this,
the window lifted. Whatever that sweetness in the breeze is,
as if it's still summer, thank You for that, and for the Beatles.
~ Chris Forhan,

37:Here is a seven-step process you can use to develop the practice of deep breathing on a daily basis: Determine a time of day to practice deep breathing, preferably after a daily habit you perform consistently, like brushing your teeth. Morning is always a good time to practice, as it sets the tone for your day. However, you may find you want to take a break in the middle of the day, as things get more hectic during your workday. Before bed is another good time, as it promotes a restful state before sleep. Select a setting for your breathing practice in a quiet space where you won’t be distracted or interrupted. Turn off your phone, computer, and any other device that might disturb you. Set a timer for 10 minutes. Sit on the floor with a pillow in a meditative position, like the lotus position, or in a chair with your spine straight and feet planted on the floor. Let your hands rest gently in your lap. Inhale slowly through your nose until your lungs are filled to capacity, allowing your stomach to push out on the inhalation. At the end of the inhalation, pause for a count of two. ~ S J Scott,

38:Sometimes, Arin almost understood what Kestrel had done. Even now, as he felt the drift of the boat and didn't fight its pull, Arin remembered the yearning in Kestrel's face whatever she'd mentioned her father. Like a homesickness. Arin had wanted to shake it out of her. Especially during those early months when she had owned him. He had wanted to force her to see her father for what he was. He had wanted her to acknowledge what she was, how she was wrong, how she shouldn't long for her father's love. It was soacked in blood. Didn't she see that? How could she not?

Once, he'd hated her for it. Then it had somehow touched him. He knew it himself. He, too, wanted what he shouldn't. He, too, felt the heart chooses its own home and refuses reason. Not here, he'd tried to say. Not this. Not mine. Never. But he had felt the same sickness.

In retrospect, Kestrel's role in the taking of the eastern plains was predictable. Sometimes he damned her for currying favor with the emperor, or blamed her playing war like a game just because she could. Yet he thought he knew the truth of her reasons. She'd done it for her father. It almost made sense. At least, it did when he was near sleep and his mind was quiet, and it was harder to help what entered. Right before sleep, he came close to understanding. But he was awake now. ~ Marie Rutkoski,

39:Prime numbers are divisible only by 1 and by themselves. They hold their place in the infinite series of natural numbers, squashed, like all numbers, between two others, but one step further than the rest. They are suspicious, solitary numbers, which is why Mattia thought they were wonderful. Sometimes he thought that they had ended up in that sequence by mistake, that they'd been trapped, like pearls strung on a necklace. Other times he suspected that they too would have preferred to be like all the others, just ordinary numbers, but for some reason they couldn't do it. This second thought struck him mostly at night, in the chaotic interweaving of images that comes before sleep, when the mind is too weak to tell itself lies.

In his first year at university, Mattia had learned that, among prime numbers, there are some that are even more special. Mathematicians call them twin primes: pairs of prime numbers that are close to each other, almost neighbors, but between them there is always an even number that prevents them from truly touching. Numbers like 11 and 13, like 17 and 19, 41 and 43. If you have the patience to go on counting, you discover that these pairs gradually become rarer. You encounter increasingly isolated primes, lost in that silent, measured space made only of ciphers, and you develop a distressing presentiment that the pairs encountered up until that point were accidental, that solitude is the true destiny. Then, just when you're about to surrender, when you no longer have the desire to go on counting, you come across another pair of twins, clutching each other tightly. There is a common conviction among mathematicians that however far you go, there will always be another two, even if no one can say where exactly, until they are discovered. ~ Paolo Giordano,

40:You squeeze and crinkle the toothpaste tube even though you know it bothers your spouse. You complain about the dirty dishes instead of putting them in the dishwasher. You fight for your own way in little things, rather than seeing them as an opportunity to serve. You allow yourself to go to bed irritated after a little disagreement. Day after day you leave for work without a moment of tenderness between you. You fight for your view of beauty rather than making your home a visual expression of the tastes of both of you. You allow yourself to do little rude things you would never have done in courtship. You quit asking for forgiveness in the little moments of wrong. You complain about how the other does little things, when it really doesn’t make any difference. You make little decisions without consultation. You quit investing in the friendship intimacy of your marriage. You fight for your own way rather than for unity in little moments of disagreement. You complain about the other’s foibles and weaknesses. You fail to seize those openings to encourage. You quit searching for little avenues for expressing love. You begin to keep a record of little wrongs. You allow yourself to be irritated by what you once appreciated. You quit making sure that every day is punctuated with tenderness before sleep takes you away. You quit regularly expressing appreciation and respect. You allow your physical eyes and the eyes of your heart to wander. You swallow little hurts that you would have once discussed. You begin to turn little requests into regular demands. You quit taking care of yourself. You become willing to live with more silence and distance than you would have when you were approaching marriage. You quit working in those little moments to make your marriage better, and you begin to succumb to what is. ~ Paul David Tripp,

41:Duke
He was hit back of the head for a haul of $15,
a Diner’s Club Card and picture of his daughter in a helmet
on a horse tethered to a pole that centered
its revolving universe. Pacing the halls, he’d ask
for a blow job he didn’t want. The ward’s new visitors
didn’t know this request was all the injury
had left him to say, and would be shamed or pissed,
a few hitting him as he stood with his mouth
slightly open and large frame leaning in. His wife
divorced him for good and blameless reasons. He would not
be coming home to share his thoughts on film and weather,
or remembering her any longer than it took to leave a room.
He liked ham. Kept newspapers in drawers and under his bed,
each unread page hand-pressed flat. And when it snowed
he leaned into one of the sealed, unbreakable windows,
a cheek to the cool glass as he held his fingers
over his mouth and moaned low and constant like the sound
of a boat on the far side of a lake. When he died
they cut him open to see how his habits had been rewired
and so tightly looped. Having known him they were afraid
of what can happen when you cross the lot to the office
or pull up to a light and thump the wheel as you might
any hour. If you stare at the dyed
and beautiful cross sections of a brain, it’s natural
to wonder how we extract the taste of coffee
or sense of a note accurately found and held on an oboe
from this bramble. On Duke’s slides they circled
the regions of blight which explain
why almost all behavior we recognize as human was lost,
but not why a man who’d curl into a ball
like a caterpillar when barely touched, could only ask
for sex, for intimacy, for the very thing
15
he could least accept and lived twelve years without,
no embrace or caress, no kiss on the lips before sleep,
until he died in the lounge looking out on winter sky
that seemed eager to snow all day but didn’t.
~ Bob Hicok,

42:Before Sleep
Now the creeping nets of sleep
Stretch about and gather nigh,
And the midnight dim and deep
Like a spirit passes by,
Trailing from her crystal dress
Dreams and silent frostiness.
Yet a moment, ere I be
Tangled in the snares of night,
All the dreamy heart of me
To my Lady takes its flight,
To her chamber where she lies,
Wrapt in midnight phantasies.
Over many a glinting street
And the snow capped roofs of men,
Towers that tremble with the beat
Of the midnight bells, and then,
Where my body may not be,
Stands my spirit holily.
Wake not, Lady, wake not soon:
Through the frosty windows fall
Broken glimmers of the moon
Dimly on the floor and wall;
Wake not, Lady, never care,
'Tis my spirit kneeling there.
Let him kneel a moment now,
For the minutes fly apace;
Let him see the sleeping brow,
And the sweetly rounded face:
He shall tell me soon aright
How my lady looks to-night.
How her tresses out and in
Fold in many a curly freak,
Round about the snowy chin
And the softly tinted cheek,
67
Where no sorrows now can weep,
And the dimples lie asleep.
How her eyelids meet and match,
Gathered in two dusky seams,
Each the little creamy thatch
Of an azure house of dreams,
Or two flowers that love the light
Folded softly up at night.
How her bosom, breathing low,
Stirs the wavy coverlet
With a motion soft and slow:
Oh, my Lady, wake not yet;
There without a thought of guile
Let my spirit dream a while.
Yet, my spirit back to me,
Hurry soon and have a care;
Love will turn to agony,
If you rashly linger there;
Bending low as spirits may,
Touch her lips and come away.
So, fond spirit, beauty-fed,
Turning when your wave is o'er,
Weave a cross above the bed
And a sleep-rune on the floor,
That no evil enter there,
Ugly shapes and dreams beware.
Then, ye looming nets of sleep,
Ye may have me all your own,
For the night is wearing deep
And the ice-winds whisk and moan;
Come with all your drowsy stress,
Dreams and silent frostiness.
~ Archibald Lampman,

43:
ON THE

TEACHERS OF

VIRTUE

A sage was praised to Zarathustra for knowing how
to speak well of sleep and of virtue: he was said to be
honored and rewarded highly for this, and all the
youths were said to be sitting at his feet. To him
Zarathustra went, and he sat at his feet with all the
youths. And thus spoke the sage:
"Honor sleep and be bashful before it-that first of
all. And avoid all who sleep badly and stay awake at
night. Even the thief is bashful before sleep: he always
steals silently through the night. Shameless, however,
is the watchman of the night; shamelessly he carries
his horn.
"Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay
awake all day. Ten times a day you must overcome
yourself: that makes you good and tired and is opium
for the soul. Ten times you must reconcile yourself
again with yourself; for, overcoming is bitterness, and
the unreconciled sleep badly. Ten truths a day you
must find; else you will still be seeking truth by night,
and your soul will remain hungry. Ten times a day you
must laugh and be cheerful; else you will be disturbed
at night by your stomach, this father of gloom.
"Few know it, but one must have all the virtues to
sleep well. Shall I bear false witness? Shall I commit
adultery? Shall I covet my neighbor's maid? All that
would go ill with good sleep.
"And even if one has all the virtues, there is one
further thing one must know: to send even the virtues
to sleep at the right time. Lest they quarrel with each
other, the fair little women, about you, child of mis-
29
fortune. Peace with God and the neighbor: that is
what good sleep demands. And peace even with the
neighbor's devil-else he will haunt you at night.
"Honor the magistrates and obey them-even the
crooked magistrates. Good sleep demands it. Is it my
fault that power likes to walk on crooked legs?
"I shall call him the best shepherd who leads his
sheep to the greenest pasture: that goes well with good
sleep.
"I do not want many honors, or great jewels: that inflames the spleen. But one sleeps badly without a good
name andl a little jewel.
"A little company is more welcome to me than evil
company: but they must go and come at the right
time. That goes well with good sleep.
"Much, too, do I like the poor in spirit: they promote sleep. Blessed are they, especially if one always
tells them that they are right.
"Thus passes the day of the virtuous. And when
night comes I guard well against calling sleep. For
sleep, who is the master of the virtues, does not want
to be called. Instead, I think about what I have done
and thought during the day. Chewing the cud, I ask
myself, patient as a cow, Well, what were your ten
overcomings? and what were your ten reconciliations
and the ten truths and the ten laughters with which
your heart edified itself? Weighing such matters and
rocked by forty thoughts, I am suddenly overcome by
sleep, the uncalled, the master of the virtues. Sleep
knocks at my eyes: they become heavy. Sleep touches
my mouth: it stays open. Verily, on soft soles he comes
to me, the dearest of thieves, and steals my thoughts:
stupid I stand, like this chair here. But not for long do
I stand like this: soon I lie."
When Zarathustra heard the sage speak thus he
laughed in his heart, for an insight had come to him.
And thus he spoke to his heart:
"This sage with his forty thoughts is a fool; but I
believe that he knows well how to sleep. Happy is he
that even lives near this sagel Such sleep is contagious-contagious even through a thick wall. There
is magic even in his chair; and it is not in vain that
the youths sit before this preacher of virtue. His wisdom is: to wake in order to sleep well. And verily,
if life had no sense and I had to choose nonsense,
then I too should consider this the most sensible
nonsense.
"Now I understand clearly what was once sought
above all when teachers of virtue were sought. Good
sleep was sought, and opiate virtues for it. For all these
much praised sages who were teachers of virtue, wisdom was the sleep without dreams: they knew no
better meaning of life.
"Today too there may still be a few like this
preacher of virtue, and not all so honest; but their time
is up. And not for long will they stand like this: soon
they will lie.
"Blessed are the sleepy ones: for they shall soon
drop off."
Thus spoke Zarathustra.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche, ON THE TEACHERS OF VIRTUE
,

44:Attention on Hypnagogic Imagery The most common strategy for inducing WILDs is to fall asleep while focusing on the hypnagogic imagery that accompanies sleep onset. Initially, you are likely to see relatively simple images, flashes of light, geometric patterns, and the like.

Gradually more complicated forms appear: faces, people, and finally entire scenes. 6

The following account of what the Russian philosopher P. D. Ouspensky called “half-dream states” provides a vivid example of what hypnagogic imagery can be like:

I am falling asleep. Golden dots, sparks and tiny stars appear and disappear before my eyes. These sparks and stars gradually merge into a golden net with diagonal meshes which moves slowly and regularly in rhythm with the beating of my heart, which I feel quite distinctly. The next moment the golden net is transformed into rows of brass helmets belonging to Roman soldiers marching along the street below. I hear their measured tread and watch them from the window of a high house in Galata, in Constantinople, in a narrow lane, one end of which leads to the old wharf and the Golden Horn with its ships and steamers and the minarets of Stamboul behind them. I hear their heavy measured tread, and see the sun shining on their helmets. Then suddenly I detach myself from the window sill on which I am lying, and in the same reclining position fly slowly over the lane, over the houses, and then over the Golden Horn in the direction of Stamboul. I smell the sea, feel the wind, the warm sun. This flying gives me a wonderfully pleasant sensation, and I cannot help opening my eyes. 7

Ouspensky’s half-dream states developed out of a habit of observing the contents of his mind while falling asleep or in half-sleep after awakening from a dream. He notes that they were much easier to observe in the morning after awakening than before sleep at the beginning of the night and did not occur at all “without definite efforts.” 8

Dr. Nathan Rapport, an American psychiatrist, cultivated an approach to lucid dreaming very similar to Ouspensky’s: “While in bed awaiting sleep, the experimenter interrupts his thoughts every few minutes with an effort to recall the mental item vanishing before each intrusion that inquisitive attention.” 9 This habit is continued sleep itself, with results like the following:

Brilliant lights flashed, and a myriad of sparkles twinkled from a magnificent cut glass chandelier. Interesting as any stage extravaganza were the many quaintly detailed figurines upon a mantel against the distant, paneled wall adorned in rococo.

At the right a merry group of beauties and gallants in the most elegant attire of Victorian England idled away a pleasant occasion. This scene continued for [a] period of I was not aware, before I discovered that it was not reality, but a mental picture and that I was viewing it. Instantly it became an incommunicably beautiful vision. It was with the greatest stealth that my vaguely awakened mind began to peep: for I knew that these glorious shows end abruptly because of such intrusions.

I thought, “Have I here one of those mind pictures that are without motion?” As if in reply, one of the young ladies gracefully waltzed about the room. She returned to the group and immobility, with a smile lighting her pretty face, which was turned over her shoulder toward me. The entire color scheme was unobtrusive despite the kaleidoscopic sparkles of the chandelier, the exquisite blues and creamy pinks of the rich settings and costumes. I felt that only my interest in dreams brought my notice to the tints – delicate, yet all alive as if with inner illumination. 10

Hypnagogic Imagery Technique

1. Relax completely

While lying in bed, gently close your eyes and relax your head, neck, back, arms, and legs. Completely let go of all muscular and mental tension, and breathe slowly and restfully. Enjoy the feeling of relaxation and let go of your thoughts, worries, and concerns. If you have just awakened from sleep, you are probably sufficiently relaxed.

Otherwise, you may use either the progressive relaxation exercise (page 33) or the 61-point relaxation exercise (page 34) to relax more deeply. Let everything wind down,

slower and slower, more and more relaxed, until your mind becomes as serene as the calmest sea.

2. Observe the visual images

Gently focus your attention on the visual images that will gradually appear before your mind’s eye. Watch how the images begin and end. Try to observe the images as delicately as possible, allowing them to be passively reflected in your mind as they unfold. Do not attempt to hold onto the images, but instead just watch without attachment or desire for action. While doing this, try to take the perspective of a detached observer as much as possible. At first you will see a sequence of disconnected, fleeting patterns and images. The images will gradually develop into scenes that become more and more complex, finally joining into extended sequences.

3. Enter the dream

When the imagery becomes a moving, vivid scenario, you should allow yourself to be passively drawn into the dream world. Do not try to actively enter the dream scene,

but instead continue to take a detached interest in the imagery. Let your involvement with what is happening draw you into the dream. But be careful of too much involvement and too little attention. Don’t forget that you are dreaming now!

Commentary

Probably the most difficult part of this technique to master is entering the dream at Step 3. The challenge is to develop a delicate vigilance, an unobtrusive observer perspective, from which you let yourself be drawn into the dream. As Paul Tholey has emphasized, “It is not desirable to want actively to enter into the scenery,

since such an intention as a rule causes the scenery to disappear.” 11 A passive volition similar to that described in the section on autosuggestion in the previous chapter is required: in Tholey’s words, “Instead of actively wanting to enter into the scenery, the subject should attempt to let himself be carried into it passively.” 12 A Tibetan teacher advises a similar frame of mind: “While delicately observing the mind, lead it gently into the dream state, as though you were leading a child by the hand.” 13

Another risk is that, once you have entered into the dream, the world can seem so realistic that it is easy to lose lucidity, as happened in the beginning of Rapport’s WILD described above. As insurance in case this happens, Tholey recommends that you resolve to carry out a particular action in the dream, so that if you momentarily lose lucidity, you may remember your intention to carry out the action and thereby regain lucidity.
~ Stephen LaBerge, Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming,

45:had to instruct the announcers to say "'Dillan,' the way he himself pronounced
it". His middle name, Marlais, was given to him in honour of his great-uncle,
Unitarian minister William Thomas, whose bardic name was Gwilym Marles.
His childhood was spent largely in Swansea, with regular summer trips to visit his
maternal aunts' Carmarthenshire farms. These rural sojourns and the contrast
with the town life of Swansea provided inspiration for much of his work, notably
many short stories, radio essays, and the poem Fern Hill. Thomas was known to
be a sickly child who suffered from bronchitis and asthma. He shied away from
school and preferred reading on his own. He was considered too frail to fight in
World War II, instead serving the war effort by writing scripts for the
government. Thomas's formal education began at Mrs. Hole's Dame school, a
private school which was situated a few streets away on Mirador Crescent. He
described his experience there in Quite Early One Morning:
Never was there such a dame school as ours, so firm and kind and smelling of
galoshes, with the sweet and fumbled music of the piano lessons drifting down
from upstairs to the lonely schoolroom, where only the sometimes tearful wicked
sat over undone sums, or to repent a little crime — the pulling of a girl's hair
during geography, the sly shin kick under the table during English literature.
In October 1925, Thomas attended the single-sex Swansea Grammar School, in
the Mount Pleasant district of the city, where his father taught. He was an
undistinguished student. Thomas's first poem was published in the school's
magazine. He later became its editor. He began keeping poetry notebooks and
amassed 200 poems in four such journals between 1930 and 1934. He left school
at 16 to become a reporter for the local newspaper, the South Wales Daily Post,
only to leave the job under pressure 18 months later in 1932. After leaving the
job he filled his notebooks even faster. Of the 90 poems he published, half were
written during these first years. He then joined an amateur dramatic group in
Mumbles called Little Theatre (Now Known as Swansea Little Theatre), but still
continued to work as a freelance journalist for a few more years.
Thomas spent his time visiting the cinema in the Uplands, walking along
Swansea Bay, visiting a theatre where he used to perform, and frequenting
Swansea's pubs. He especially patronised those in the Mumbles area such the
Antelope Hotel and the Mermaid Hotel. A short walk from the local newspaper
where he worked was the Kardomah Café in Castle Street, central Swansea. At
the café he met with various artist contemporaries, such as his good friend the
poet Vernon Watkins. These writers, musicians and artists became known as 'The
Kardomah Gang'. In 1932, Thomas embarked on what would be one of his
various visits to London.
In February 1941, Swansea was bombed by the German Luftwaffe in a "three
nights' blitz". Castle Street was just one of the many streets in Swansea that
suffered badly; the rows of shops, including the 'Kardomah Café', were
destroyed. Thomas later wrote about this in his radio play Return Journey Home,
in which he describes the café as being "razed to the snow". Return Journey
Home was first broadcast on 15 June 1947, having been written soon after the
bombing raids. Thomas walked through the bombed-out shell of the town centre
with his friend Bert Trick. Upset at the sight, he concluded: "Our Swansea is
dead". The Kardomah Café later reopened on Portland Street, not far from the
original location
Career and Family
It is often commented that Thomas was indulged like a child and he was, in fact,
still a teenager when he published many of the poems he would become famous
for: “And death shall have no dominion" “Before I Knocked” and “The Force That
Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower". "And death shall have no dominion",
appeared in the New English Weekly in May 1933 and further work appeared in
The Listener in 1934 catching the attention of two of the most senior poets of the
day T. S. Eliot and Stephen Spender. His highly acclaimed first poetry volume, 18
Poems, was published on 18 December 1934, and went on to win a contest run
by The Sunday Referee, netting him new admirers from the London poetry world,
including Edith Sitwell. The anthology was published by Fortune Press, which did
not pay its writers and expected them to buy a certain number of copies
themselves. A similar arrangement would later be used by a number of other
new authors, including Philip Larkin.
His passionate musical lyricism caused a sensation in these years of desiccated
Modernism; the critic Desmond Hawkins said it was “the sort of bomb that bursts
no more than once in three years”. In all, he wrote half of his poems while living
at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive before he moved to London.It was also the time that
Thomas's reputation for heavy drinking developed.
In the spring of 1936, ~ Dylan Thomas

met dancer Caitlin Macnamara in the
Wheatsheaf pub, in the Fitzrovia area of London's West End. They were
introduced by Augustus John, who was Macnamara's lover at the time (there
were rumours that she continued her relationship with John after she married
Thomas). A drunken Thomas proposed to Macnamara on the spot, and the two
began a courtship. On 11 July 1937, Thomas married Macnamara in a register
office in Penzance, Cornwall. In 1938, the couple rented a cottage in the village
of Laugharne, Carmarthenshire, West Wales. Their first child, Llewelyn Edouard,
was born on 30 January 1939 (d. 2000). Their daughter, Aeronwy Thomas-Ellis,
was born on 3 March 1943 (d. 2009). A second son, Colm Garan Hart, was born
on 24 July 1949.
Wartime and After
At the outset of the Second World War, Thomas was designated C3, which meant
that although he could, in theory, be called up for service he would be in one of
the last groups to be so. He was saddened to see his friends enter active service
leaving him behind and drank whilst struggling to support his family. He lived on
tiny fees from writing and reviewing and borrowed heavily from friends and
acquaintances, writing begging letters to random literary figures in hope of
support, envisaging this as a plan of long term regular income. He wrote to the
director of the films division of the Ministry of Information asking for employment
but after a rebuff eventually ended up working for Strand Films. Strand produced
films for the Ministry of Information and Thomas scripted at least five in 1942
with titles such as This Is Colour (about dye), New Towns For Old, These Are The
Men and Our Country (a sentimental tour of Britain). He actively sought to build
a reputation as a raconteur and outrageous writer, heavy drinker and wit.
The publication of Deaths and Entrances in 1946 was a major turning point for
Thomas. Poet and critic W. J. Turner commented in The Spectator "This book
alone, in my opinion, ranks him as a major poet". Thomas was well known for
being a versatile and dynamic speaker, best known for his poetry readings. He
made over 200 broadcasts for the BBC.
Often considered his greatest single work, Under Milk Wood, a radio play
featuring the characters of Llareggub, is set in a fictional Welsh fishing village
('Llareggub' is 'Bugger All' backwards, implying that there is absolutely nothing
to do there). The BBC credited their producer Stella Hillier with ensuring the play
actually materialised. Assigned "some of the more wayward characters who were
then writing for the BBC", she dragged the notoriously unreliable Thomas out of
the pub and back to her office to finish the work. The play took several years to
write, the first half mostly in South Leigh, Oxford, in 1948, whilst the second half
was mostly written in America in May 1953. Fewer than 300 lines were written in
Laugharne, according to one account, which also explains the influence of New
Quay on the play.
New York
John Malcolm Brinnin invited Thomas to New York and in 1950 embarked on a
lucrative three month tour of arts centres and campuses in the States. He toured
there again in 1952, this time with Caitlin, who discovered that he had been
unfaithful on his 1950 trip. They both drank heavily, as if in competition,
Thomas's health beginning to suffer with gout and lung problems. Thomas
performed a 'work in progress' version of Under Milk Wood solo for the first time
on 3 May at Harvard during his early 1953 US tour, and then with a cast at the
Poetry Centre in New York on 14 May. He worked on the play further in Wales,
where in its completed form it premiered the Lyric Theatre, Carmarthen, Wales
on 8 October 1953, just 12 miles away from Laugharne. It was said Thomas gave
a 'supreme virtuoso performance'. He then travelled to London and on the 19
October he flew to America. He died in New York on 5 November 1953 before the
BBC could record the play. Richard Burton starred in the first broadcast in 1954
and was joined by Elizabeth Taylor in a subsequent film.
Thomas's last collection Collected Poems, 1934–1952, published when he was
38, won the Foyle poetry prize. He wrote "Do not go gentle into that good night",
a villanelle, to his dying father, who passed away in 1952, one of the poet's last
poems.
Death
Thomas arrived in New York on 20 October 1953, to take part in a performance
of Under Milk Wood at the city's prestigious Poetry Centre. He was already ill and
had a history of blackouts and heart problems, using an inhaler in New York to
help his breathing. Thomas had liked to boast of his addiction to drinking, saying
"An alcoholic is someone you don't like, who drinks as much as you do." He
"liked the taste of whisky" and had a powerful reputation for his drinking. The
writer Elizabeth Hardwick recalled how intoxicating a performer he was and how
the tension would build before a performance: “Would he arrive only to break
down on the stage? Would some dismaying scene take place at the faculty party?
Would he be offensive, violent, obscene? These were alarming and yet exciting
possibilities.” His wife Caitlin said in her embittered memoir “Nobody ever needed
encouragement less, and he was drowned in it.” Thomas “exhibited the excesses
and experienced the adulation which would later be associated with rock stars,”
however the amount he is supposed to have drunk in his lifetime and in New
York before his death, may well have been exaggerated as Thomas became
mythologised.
On the evening of 27 October 1953, Thomas's 39th birthday, the poet attended a
party in his honour but felt so unwell that he returned to his hotel. On 28 October
1953, he took part in Poetry And The Film, a recorded symposium at Cinema 16,
which included panellists Amos Vogel, Maya Deren, Parker Tyler, and Willard
Maas. The director of the Poetry Centre, John Brinnin, was also Thomas's tour
agent. Brinnin didn't travel to New York, remaining at home in Boston and
handed responsibility to his assistant, Liz Reitell. Reitell met Thomas at Idlewild
Airport (now JFK airport) and he told her that he had had a terrible week, had
missed her terribly and wanted to go to bed with her. Despite Reitell's previous
misgivings about their relationship they spent the rest of the day and night
together at the Chelsea Hotel. The next day she invited him to her apartment but
he declined, saying that he was not feeling well and retired to his bed for the rest
of the afternoon. After spending the night at the hotel with Thomas, Reitell went
back to her own apartment for a change of clothes. At breakfast Herb Hannum
noticed how sick Thomas looked and suggested a visit to a Dr. Feltenstein before
the performance of Under Milk Wood that evening. The doctor went to work with
his needle, and Thomas made it through the two performances of Under Milk
Wood, but collapsed straight afterwards. Reitell would later describe Feltenstein
as a wild doctor who believed injections could cure anything.
A turning point came on 2 November. Air pollution in New York had risen
significantly and exacerbated chest illnesses, such as Thomas had. By the end of
the month, over two hundred New Yorkers had died from the smog. On 3
November Thomas spent most of that day in bed drinking He went out in the
evening to keep two drink appointments. After returning to the hotel, he went
out again for a drink at 2am. After drinking at the White Horse Tavern, a pub
he'd found through Scottish poet Ruthven Todd, Thomas returned to the Hotel
Chelsea, declaring, "I've had eighteen straight whiskies. I think that's the
record!" The barman and the owner of the pub who served Thomas at the time
later commented that Thomas couldn't have imbibed more than half that
amount. Thomas had an appointment to visit a clam house in New Jersey on 4
November. When phoned at the Chelsea that morning, he said that he was
feeling awful and asked to take a rain-check. Later, he did go drinking with
Reitell at the White Horse and, feeling sick again, returned to the hotel. Dr.
Feltenstein came to see him three times that day, on the third call prescribing
morphine, which seriously affected Thomas's breathing. At midnight on 5
November, his breathing became more difficult and his face turned blue. Reitell
unsuccessfully tried to get hold of Feltenstein.
Thomas was admitted to the emergency ward at nearby St Vincent's hospital.
The medical notes state that he arrived in a coma at 1.58am, and that the
"impression upon admission was acute alcoholic encephalopathy damage to the
brain by alcohol, for which the patient was treated without response". The duty
doctors found bronchitis in all parts of his bronchial tree, both left and right
sides. An X-ray showed pneumonia, and a raised white cell count confirmed the
presence of an infection. Caitlin in Laugharne was sent a telegram on 5
November, notifying her that Dylan was in hospital. She flew to America the
following day and was taken, with a police escort, to the hospital. Her alleged
first words were "Is the bloody man dead yet?" The pneumonia worsened and
Thomas died, whilst in coma, at noon on 9 November.
Poetry
Thomas's verbal style played against strict verse forms, such as in the villanelle
Do not go gentle into that good night. His images were carefully ordered in a
patterned sequence, and his major theme was the unity of all life, the continuing
process of life and death and new life that linked the generations. Thomas saw
biology as a magical transformation producing unity out of diversity, and in his
poetry he sought a poetic ritual to celebrate this unity. He saw men and women
locked in cycles of growth, love, procreation, new growth, death, and new life
again. Therefore, each image engenders its opposite. Thomas derived his closely
woven, sometimes self-contradictory images from the Bible, Welsh folklore and
preaching, and Freud. Thomas's poetry is notable for its musicality, most clear in
poems such as Fern Hill, In Country Sleep, Ballad of the Long-legged Bait or In
the White Giant's Thigh from Under Milkwood:
Who once were a bloom of wayside brides in the hawed house
and heard the lewd, wooed field flow to the coming frost,
the scurrying, furred small friars squeal in the dowse
of day, in the thistle aisles, till the white owl crossed
Thomas once confided that the poems which had most influenced him were
Mother Goose rhymes which his parents taught him when he was a child:
I should say I wanted to write poetry in the beginning because I had fallen in
love with words. The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes and before I could
read them for myself I had come to love the words of them. The words alone.
What the words stood for was of a very secondary importance. [...] I fell in love,
that is the only expression I can think of, at once, and am still at the mercy of
words, though sometimes now, knowing a little of their behavior very well, I
think I can influence them slightly and have even learned to beat them now and
then, which they appear to enjoy. I tumbled for words at once. And, when I
began to read the nursery rhymes for myself, and, later, to read other verses
and ballads, I knew that I had discovered the most important things, to me, that
could be ever.
A Child's Christmas In Wales
One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town
corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I
sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it
snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for
twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.
All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and
headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the
rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and
bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued
ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs.
Prothero and the firemen.
It was on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's
garden, waiting for cats, with her son Jim. It was snowing. It was always snowing
at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland, though there were
no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped
in socks, we waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horriblewhiskered, spitting and snarling, they would slink and sidle over the white backgarden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and moccasined
trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at
the green of their eyes. The wise cats never appeared.
We were so still, Eskimo-footed arctic marksmen in the muffling silence of the
eternal snows - eternal, ever since Wednesday - that we never heard Mrs.
Prothero's first cry from her igloo at the bottom of the garden. Or, if we heard it
at all, it was, to us, like the far-off challenge of our enemy and prey, the
neighbor's polar cat. But soon the voice grew louder.
"Fire!" cried Mrs. Prothero, and she beat the dinner-gong.
And we ran down the garden, with the snowballs in our arms, toward the house;
and smoke, indeed, was pouring out of the dining-room, and the gong was
bombilating, and Mrs. Prothero was announcing ruin like a town crier in Pompeii.
This was better than all the cats in Wales standing on the wall in a row. We
bounded into the house, laden with snowballs, and stopped at the open door of
the smoke-filled room.
Something was burning all right; perhaps it was Mr. Prothero, who always slept
there after midday dinner with a newspaper over his face. But he was standing in
the middle of the room, saying, "A fine Christmas!" and smacking at the smoke
with a slipper.
"Call the fire brigade," cried Mrs. Prothero as she beat the gong.
"There won't be there," said Mr. Prothero, "it's Christmas."
There was no fire to be seen, only clouds of smoke and Mr. Prothero standing in
the middle of them, waving his slipper as though he were conducting.
"Do something," he said. And we threw all our snowballs into the smoke - I think
we missed Mr. Prothero - and ran out of the house to the telephone box.
"Let's call the police as well," Jim said. "And the ambulance." "And Ernie Jenkins,
he likes fires."
But we only called the fire brigade, and soon the fire engine came and three tall
men in helmets brought a hose into the house and Mr. Prothero got out just in
time before they turned it on. Nobody could have had a noisier Christmas Eve.
And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky
room, Jim's Aunt, Miss. Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim
and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would say to them. She said the
right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets,
standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said,
"Would you like anything to read?"
Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and
birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when
we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday
afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones
of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel,
before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback,
it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says: "It snowed last year, too. I
made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother
down and then we had tea."
"But that was not the same snow," I say. "Our snow was not only shaken from
white wash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and swam
and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew
overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely
-ivied the walls and settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb
thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards."
"Were there postmen then, too?"
"With sprinkling eyes and wind-cherried noses, on spread, frozen feet they
crunched up to the doors and mittened on them manfully. But all that the
children could hear was a ringing of bells."
"You mean that the postman went rat-a-tat-tat and the doors rang?"
"I mean that the bells the children could hear were inside them."
"I only hear thunder sometimes, never bells."
"There were church bells, too."
"Inside them?"
"No, no, no, in the bat-black, snow-white belfries, tugged by bishops and storks.
And they rang their tidings over the bandaged town, over the frozen foam of the
powder and ice-cream hills, over the crackling sea. It seemed that all the
churches boomed for joy under my window; and the weathercocks crew for
Christmas, on our fence."
"Get back to the postmen"
"They were just ordinary postmen, found of walking and dogs and Christmas and
the snow. They knocked on the doors with blue knuckles ...."
"Ours has got a black knocker...."
"And then they stood on the white Welcome mat in the little, drifted porches and
huffed and puffed, making ghosts with their breath, and jogged from foot to foot
like small boys wanting to go out."
"And then the presents?"
"And then the Presents, after the Christmas box. And the cold postman, with a
rose on his button-nose, tingled down the tea-tray-slithered run of the chilly
glinting hill. He went in his ice-bound boots like a man on fishmonger's slabs. "He
wagged his bag like a frozen camel's hump, dizzily turned the corner on one foot,
and, by God, he was gone."
"Get back to the Presents."
"There were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and
mittens made for giant sloths; zebra scarfs of a substance like silky gum that
could be tug-o'-warred down to the galoshes; blinding tam-o'-shanters like
patchwork tea cozies and bunny-suited busbies and balaclavas for victims of
head-shrinking tribes; from aunts who always wore wool next to the skin there
were mustached and rasping vests that made you wonder why the aunts had any
skin left at all; and once I had a little crocheted nose bag from an aunt now, alas,
no longer whinnying with us. And pictureless books in which small boys, though
warned with quotations not to, would skate on Farmer Giles' pond and did and
drowned; and books that told me everything about the wasp, except why."
"Go on the Useless Presents."
"Bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag and a false nose
and a tram-conductor's cap and a machine that punched tickets and rang a bell;
never a catapult; once, by mistake that no one could explain, a little hatchet;
10
and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a
mewing moo that an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow; and a
painting book in which I could make the grass, the trees, the sea and the animals
any colour I pleased, and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the red
field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds. Hardboileds, toffee, fudge
and allsorts, crunches, cracknels, humbugs, glaciers, marzipan, and butterwelsh
for the Welsh. And troops of bright tin soldiers who, if they could not fight, could
always run. And Snakes-and-Families and Happy Ladders. And Easy HobbiGames for Little Engineers, complete with instructions. Oh, easy for Leonardo!
And a whistle to make the dogs bark to wake up the old man next door to make
him beat on the wall with his stick to shake our picture off the wall. And a packet
of cigarettes: you put one in your mouth and you stood at the corner of the
street and you waited for hours, in vain, for an old lady to scold you for smoking
a cigarette, and then with a smirk you ate it. And then it was breakfast under the
balloons."
"Were there Uncles like in our house?"
"There are always Uncles at Christmas. The same Uncles. And on Christmas
morning, with dog-disturbing whistle and sugar fags, I would scour the swatched
town for the news of the little world, and find always a dead bird by the Post
Office or by the white deserted swings; perhaps a robin, all but one of his fires
out. Men and women wading or scooping back from chapel, with taproom noses
and wind-bussed cheeks, all albinos, huddles their stiff black jarring feathers
against the irreligious snow. Mistletoe hung from the gas brackets in all the front
parlors; there was sherry and walnuts and bottled beer and crackers by the
dessertspoons; and cats in their fur-abouts watched the fires; and the highheaped fire spat, all ready for the chestnuts and the mulling pokers. Some few
large men sat in the front parlors, without their collars, Uncles almost certainly,
trying their new cigars, holding them out judiciously at arms' length, returning
them to their mouths, coughing, then holding them out again as though waiting
for the explosion; and some few small aunts, not wanted in the kitchen, nor
anywhere else for that matter, sat on the very edge of their chairs, poised and
brittle, afraid to break, like faded cups and saucers."
Not many those mornings trod the piling streets: an old man always, fawnbowlered, yellow-gloved and, at this time of year, with spats of snow, would take
his constitutional to the white bowling green and back, as he would take it wet or
fire on Christmas Day or Doomsday; sometimes two hale young men, with big
pipes blazing, no overcoats and wind blown scarfs, would trudge, unspeaking,
down to the forlorn sea, to work up an appetite, to blow away the fumes, who
knows, to walk into the waves until nothing of them was left but the two furling
smoke clouds of their inextinguishable briars. Then I would be slap-dashing
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home, the gravy smell of the dinners of others, the bird smell, the brandy, the
pudding and mince, coiling up to my nostrils, when out of a snow-clogged side
lane would come a boy the spit of myself, with a pink-tipped cigarette and the
violet past of a black eye, cocky as a bullfinch, leering all to himself.
I hated him on sight and sound, and would be about to put my dog whistle to my
lips and blow him off the face of Christmas when suddenly he, with a violet wink,
put his whistle to his lips and blew so stridently, so high, so exquisitely loud, that
gobbling faces, their cheeks bulged with goose, would press against their tinsled
windows, the whole length of the white echoing street. For dinner we had turkey
and blazing pudding, and after dinner the Uncles sat in front of the fire, loosened
all buttons, put their large moist hands over their watch chains, groaned a little
and slept. Mothers, aunts and sisters scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens. Auntie
Bessie, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clock-work mouse,
whimpered at the sideboard and had some elderberry wine. The dog was sick.
Auntie Dosie had to have three aspirins, but Auntie Hannah, who liked port,
stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed
thrush. I would blow up balloons to see how big they would blow up to; and,
when they burst, which they all did, the Uncles jumped and rumbled. In the rich
and heavy afternoon, the Uncles breathing like dolphins and the snow
descending, I would sit among festoons and Chinese lanterns and nibble dates
and try to make a model man-o'-war, following the Instructions for Little
Engineers, and produce what might be mistaken for a sea-going tramcar.
Or I would go out, my bright new boots squeaking, into the white world, on to
the seaward hill, to call on Jim and Dan and Jack and to pad through the still
streets, leaving huge footprints on the hidden pavements.
"I bet people will think there's been hippos."
"What would you do if you saw a hippo coming down our street?"
"I'd go like this, bang! I'd throw him over the railings and roll him down the hill
and then I'd tickle him under the ear and he'd wag his tail."
"What would you do if you saw two hippos?"
Iron-flanked and bellowing he-hippos clanked and battered through the scudding
snow toward us as we passed Mr. Daniel's house.
"Let's post Mr. Daniel a snow-ball through his letter box."
"Let's write things in the snow."
"Let's write, 'Mr. Daniel looks like a spaniel' all over his lawn."
Or we walked on the white shore. "Can the fishes see it's snowing?"
The silent one-clouded heavens drifted on to the sea. Now we were snow-blind
travelers lost on the north hills, and vast dewlapped dogs, with flasks round their
12
necks, ambled and shambled up to us, baying "Excelsior." We returned home
through the poor streets where only a few children fumbled with bare red fingers
in the wheel-rutted snow and cat-called after us, their voices fading away, as we
trudged uphill, into the cries of the dock birds and the hooting of ships out in the
whirling bay. And then, at tea the recovered Uncles would be jolly; and the ice
cake loomed in the center of the table like a marble grave. Auntie Hannah laced
her tea with rum, because it was only once a year.
Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a
diver. Ghosts whooed like owls in the long nights when I dared not look over my
shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the stairs and the gas meter
ticked. And I remember that we went singing carols once, when there wasn't the
shaving of a moon to light the flying streets. At the end of a long road was a
drive that led to a large house, and we stumbled up the darkness of the drive
that night, each one of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand in case,
and all of us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as
of old and unpleasant and maybe webfooted men wheezing in caves. We reached
the black bulk of the house. "What shall we give them? Hark the Herald?"
"No," Jack said, "Good King Wencelas. I'll count three." One, two three, and we
began to sing, our voices high and seemingly distant in the snow-felted darkness
round the house that was occupied by nobody we knew. We stood close together,
near the dark door. Good King Wencelas looked out On the Feast of Stephen ...
And then a small, dry voice, like the voice of someone who has not spoken for a
long time, joined our singing: a small, dry, eggshell voice from the other side of
the door: a small dry voice through the keyhole. And when we stopped running
we were outside our house; the front room was lovely; balloons floated under the
hot-water-bottle-gulping gas; everything was good again and shone over the
town.
"Perhaps it was a ghost," Jim said.
"Perhaps it was trolls," Dan said, who was always reading.
"Let's go in and see if there's any jelly left," Jack said. And we did that.
Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin
sang "Cherry Ripe," and another uncle sang "Drake's Drum." It was very warm in
the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip wine, sang a song
about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart
was like a Bird's Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to
bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the
unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the
other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady
falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the
close and holy darkness, and then I slept.
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~ Dylan Thomas,

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