I woke myself to escape sleep’s confusion. Everything was crazed there, topsy-turvy, threatening. I didn’t know where I was or what was going on. Danger stalked – but from which direction? The Nameless One, our perpetual toxic smog, had me in his sights – something about a discarded candy-wrapper that discredited him. I had to be gone fast – into the light.

                  Some nightmares are easily read: you’re tongue-tied before a crowd, late heading to your wedding. In others, your jeopardy is non-specific, existential. Nothing makes sense! Are you losing your sanity? What would life be without sanity?

                  You may wake distraught at the fragility of confidence. Most of us know what we’re up to most of our conscious hours – what’s next, what we’re supposed to do. The contents of that container – “supposed” – may be complicated, but it’s tightly packed with convictions we deem inarguable. We see ourselves clearly in our story and our story is advancing in a creditable direction. Who has time to doubt?

                  Our nightmare relocates us to a realm where everything’s foreign. We don’t have a story anymore; our supposed truths are no longer true. Our purpose is not to be obliterated. We may think of those poor souls who live continually in such confusion, holding on for dear life. (My younger son is one.) What luck, lucidity!

                  No one likes feeling lost. What if you’re stuck here! In darkened theaters I scout out exit doors glowing redly, just in case. Returning to the world we call real, I may wobble, re-collecting bearings. The humiliation is healthful, I suppose, recalling the fatuity of certainty. Certainty evinces ignorance, not intellect: who knows for sure has stopped thinking. Yet to know anything, we must believe something. “It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true,” sighed Bertrand Russell; “but it is unavoidable that we should believe something.”

                  I am fearful these days as never before. The America I knew, that I believed in, is under attack. Nothing is sacred anymore – not the White House, the Constitution, truth itself. Londoners must have felt this way during the Blitz. In my nightmare the Nameless One’s goons were coming after little me – over nothing – that candy-wrapper! Nowhere was safe.

                  Of all the Nameless One’s victims – and they are legion – peace of mind may prove most lasting. Fear, like debt or weight, is easy to put on, hard to shed. The America I grew up in felt rock-solid, no worries; today’s America feels fragile, undependable. I worry constantly.

                  How to reclaim joy in the midst of dread? You’ve got to work at it.  No bellyaching, for starters. Complaining sours the spirit without repairing the problem. Stipulate things suck, then get busy with their solution.

                  Be grateful for what you have, not regretful of what you haven’t. I bludgeon myself with this bromide all the time. We wallow in gloom only if we allow ourselves.

                  Get busy. During London’s blitz, the most afraid weren’t those with most to lose – young persons and parents in their prime – but oldsters, too feeble to help themselves. I write – or read to write – to return to sleep to ready myself to write. However futile, writing feels like action. Most urgently, don’t brood.

                  Finally, use your head. Wake up! Think! Now is the only time you have, make the most of it, you ninny. (When I use that epithet “ninny,” I am speaking to myself.) We cannot change the channel, so we must change ourselves. “Be the change that you wish to see in the world,” counseled Gandhi.