For in this sleep...

"You go to sleep now. I'll chase the demons that bring nightmares from your dreams."

I typed this out tonight over IM to a friend of mine who goes to bed hours before I do.

The sentiment came as I was thinking of something I'd seen earlier in the day while visiting the Detroit Institute of Arts. There, mounted high on one of the walls, is a painting entitled "The Nightmare":


It turns out this painting is relatively famous, and I have to admit, my heart jumps a little to think the city of Detroit -- has-been that it is -- owns such a work. The Tate in London borrowed it for an exhibit earlier this year and still hosts an online click-able analysis of the work here. Sigmund Freud supposedly owned a print of it.

The painter, a Swiss man by the name of Henry Fuseli, painted it in 1781 soon after he moved to London, just in time to spur on the Gothic movement. Later Fuseli would have an affair with Mary Wollstonecraft whose daughter would go on to write Frankenstein -- you can read all about it here.

But historical significance aside, I love the idea that a nightmare is a little Gollum-like creature you can chase away or have someone else chase away for you.

When I was young I used to be afraid of the dark. A large dresser sat in the corner of my room, and in the darkness I'd often imagine creatures of impish sizes and indistinct features creeping out of the bottom drawer. I had a night light -- a 5-watt bulb which screwed into the bottom of a lamp shaped like a hot-air balloon -- but even this wasn't quite enough to allay my fears.

To remedy the situation my dad would often sit in the hallway outside of my room and read the newspaper until I fell asleep. In my drowsy half-consciousness I'd hear him turn the pages -- most likely the Business section with its columns of numbers -- and know he was still there. Or I'd hear the loose door of the linen cabinet reassert itself against the frame and know he'd leaned back against it to consider something amongst those numbers.

Sometimes I'd startle and ask into the dark, "Daa-ad?" And from the hallway light would come, "Yes?" And then I'd be asleep again.

By morning the hallway light would be off and the night light too -- a sign one more check had been made on me -- but by then the bluish hue around the edges of my curtains told me I'd made it through the night and more light was on its way.

I can't remember exactly when we -- my dad and I -- stopped doing this. Maybe by second grade when I remember falling asleep to the times tables which I was trying to memorize. (The 6es still have a place in my heart.) And at some point I started staying up past my parents' bedtime, so the hallway light would already be off by the time I went to bed.

But, as some can attest, I still like to fall asleep with a bit of light on. And every so often I'll wake in the middle of the night, look past the foot of my bed, and think of my dad sitting out there, chasing away my own demons.