Wake
The Lacanian Review "Nightmare" Issue 8 Fall 2019
Wake
This is the sixth cover of "The Lacanian Review" that Cyrus Saint Amand Poliakoff and I have collaborated on. In our 'dreamy' particolored composite image for Nightmare, behind the iris and in place of the pupil, is a ravel of lightning but in inverted colors. The artwork evokes the membranous interior of an eyelid, the subject lit by a blinding light, noonday sun or stroke of lightning––or the horror of an eye gazing at itself. Three iterations of “wake” coalesce: an awakening that strikes as lightning; to wake to maintain the dream; and the eyelid that closes but doesn’t afford sleep. Later, the cover dawned on me as a formation. Periodically since I was eighteen, I have had a repeating nightmare in which I am awake but paralyzed, unable to escape or retaliate against a menacing presence, that in most variations of the dream, approaches me from behind. I cannot hear it, and rarely do I see it. I call out for help. I struggle to move, to run, but am immobilized, petrified, like wood. My unheard cries continue until I scream myself awake, to reconstitute my reality and save myself from the inevitable horror. I went on sleeping. This waking nightmare usually occurred during bouts of insomnia, when the desire to sleep was most intense. It was a struggle to live through the intervening days, to keep up appearances, to remain upright. But somehow I did. The series changed, but did not immediately end, with a punctuation from my analyst. I said, “I’m a wreck,” she re-sounded, “You’re erect,” and cut the session. Was it a question or a declaration? Five years later I had an awakening. I am again lying in a bed that now resembles a couch. The figure is looming behind me, framed by a large window. As I crane my neck to look, the head of the thing pivots to gaze directly at me. It is me.
Robert Buck © 2019
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