musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

Aye, there’s the rub


When I was very young, my older brother played in a minor role in his high school’s production of  Brigadoon, a musical written in the 1940ies. He made it sound like a real but faraway place he hoped to visit one day. He was older than me, so I believed him, but I wondered what it would be like to visit a pretend village that only reappeared for a single day every hundred years. I mean even if you made a friend there, you’d never see them again.

The very idea of impermanence was unsettling to me in those early days, though. It seemed a little too close to what the teacher in my Sunday School had told us about where old people went when they died, and unlike my brother, I wasn’t old enough to visit it yet.

And yet, the idea still intrigues me because I realize I’ve been to places much like Brigadoon -if only in my dreams. There, I sometimes find myself pampered by some new friend who seems to understand and accept me, then fades into oblivion when the clock-radio awakens me in the morning; I never get to see them again…

I know what you’re thinking: since I’ve lived alone for years, those dreams are just wish fantasies -an old man’s equivalent of succubae: unpaid companions, phantasmagoria. But how can you judge the remit of dream-characters in someone else’s dream? Indeed, how can I even understand my own?

Many dreams are loosely predicated on events of the previous day, of course; some, disappointingly lacking in camouflage, bespeak my own guilt and leave no hints on how I could have done things differently. Others seem symbolically obvious: losing control while driving too quickly down a curving hill in the rain, or upsetting someone by saying something unkind I didn’t mean. A taste of any one of these is usually enough to make me awaken with a sense of apprehension, often outlasting my remembrance of the contents of the dream.

At least now that I am long retired, the irritating work-dreams have largely abated, as have the unfair dream-revocations of some of my university degrees or awards. I suppose that is either progress or a sign that my past is no longer relevant; a sign that I am alone in the present -imprisoned in the now. A sign that I should no longer even hope to visit Brigadoon…

Of course, if a pleasant dream only partially awakens me in the night, I sometimes try to re-enter it; the same, I suppose with a terrifying dream once I realize that I’m not trapped on a ledge far down a mountain cliff, or do not really have to write an important exam for which I haven’t studied or attended the requisite courses. But I’m seldom able to fully re-create the situation: I cannot lucid-dream successfully, and anyway I usually cannot convince myself I have actually entered the same dream -or whether it even matters…

But sometimes, even if it is bizarre and not frightening, a dream registers differently; sometimes it’s not at all like Brigadoon and I don’t want to return to it; sometimes I just want to forget it… Occasionally it suggests something about myself that I don’t really want to know.

A few months ago I had a dream about a mirror -my bathroom mirror, I suppose. In it, I had just brushed my teeth and was smiling at the bit of toothpaste still on my upper lip when I felt suddenly embarrassed at the person staring at it from the reflection on the other side. I was pretty sure I knew it was me, but I found myself hesitating to look it in the eye. I felt as if I had just been caught looking silly; as if it was sneering at the toothpaste gaffe; or maybe as if I should be embarrassed at being publicly confronted at an awkward moment. And then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the discomfort eased and it was just me looking back at me.

It was all very confusing in the dream. I mean, who was the more real of the two of us? Who was reflecting whom? Was one of us an imposter? I remember that it occurred to me that perhaps we both were. After all, my face is one of the few areas of my body that I cannot see other than by reflection; I only know it second hand… Was that the same for it?

It made me dream-wonder what would it mean to live in a world where there were no reflections, no shiny surfaces, or no accessible still water to lean over like Narcissus and fall in love with the image. But how accurate is a reflection anyway? Shadows or unusual angles could distort the image and make it less reliable, less representative. Even selfies on our phones are subject to distortion: the lens sometimes exaggerates the size of nearby things, and makes farther objects smaller. Could my face be like that to other people, or theirs to me?

The origins of the Brigadoon legend are obscure -and apocryphal at best- but in one version, the town’s ability to disappear when trouble approached was a way of safeguarding its residents from the nearby danger: a way of escaping from problems until they either went away or were hidden in the mists of time.

But, perhaps it is only human to yearn for a place like that: a place where we are special; a place no one can enter unless they are lost. No one would be an imposter there -everybody would be notable, inimitable. Even to find the town, even to cross the bridge, let alone be able to open the gates, would be evidence of  of the uniqueness we all possess, yet often hide.

And, maybe they have no need of mirrors in Brigadoon; no need of reflections; no reason to wonder about that bit of toothpaste you had no idea you were wearing…

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gozzter

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