Is higher education about the knowledge we acquire in our courses or the encounters we undergo with disparate fellow humans whom we’d never otherwise meet?

Harry had the lower bunk. I was up above him. Liked it there because I could see out the window of our 3rd floor flat onto the sprawling concrete quad where sometimes several hundred students meandered between buildings and the library and the student center. It felt peaceful somehow, to observe their active chaos, especially near the end of the afternoon, while I basked in relative tranquility. The advantages of having a residential apartment at what was mostly a commuter’s university for that year. Sophomore year. The crowd had no time or vantage point to notice the sunset process, but I did. A pillow and a partially engaged book.

Harry was an engineering student. Taiwanese. His college was up the hill a ways. I could not understand enthusiasm for engineering in those days. I mean, first of all, the technology school had like one female for every fifty males. What kind of university life was that? But there was this dryness about it I could not penetrate. It was both bewildering and off-putting to me. It was not a matter of lacking the technical chops. At that stage I was a math major and quite immersed in algebraic and topological arcana. No — it had something to do with the way science-y types approached nature. Measuring and weighing it while denuding it of its mysteriousness, its luminosities. To this mindset, studying anything in the humanities amounted to masquerading at academics. Anything outside of STEM was was regarded as intellectually embarassing, arbitrary, and impractical. To be sure, they did some cool stuff too. Like the way Joe fixed up an old upright piano in the frat two doors down the hill and then fitted each felt hammer with a thumbtack to make it emulate a harpsichord sound. Upon which he set out to master Scott Joplin rags in his spare time. Lots of those guys had soul. But the majority always felt hollowed out, considering a topic like Victorian Prose or Jungian archetypes either with abject terror or derisive dismissal. Or they’d diagnose it with that ultimate deal-breaker: financial irrelevancy.

But Harry had a sweetness. He was like an observant refugee deposited into an American prestige school because his elders had done the legwork to identify it as a target and get him in. Stranger in a strange land. Telling accent. It was rare that Harry ever spoke about differential equations or chemical catalysts. He studied all the time, worked hard, felt the stress, but whenever he came up for oxygen he’d regale me with stories from the homeland or explain what distinguished the many types of cooked rice. Or he’d ask me what Genetics class was like and how it was to talk with girls. With Harry one often felt fatherly, although I bore precious little capacity for that instinct. A plant that needed watering but usually forgot to water itself. He’d look out for me as well, careful to inform me whenever a free meatloaf dinner was happening before some boring engineering guest speaker talk, and his pals would figure the best way to sneak me in even though I was from the inscrutable liberal arts sector.

One particular afternoon, when winter had not yet secured its grasp but trees had bared and sunsets came earlier and a sense of grim pragmatic foreboding settled over all the fleeing commuters, Harry came home from a tough exam. He thought he’d managed a ‘B’. He wanted to stare out the window with me at the darkening quad, which was unusual. Watching all the departing students and profs, trying to sense their moods. A remark here and there. Harry got expansive, but also he was sad. He talked a little about his siblings, what they were up to, and his city. Then he said my name with a question mark, a tone indicating something important was coming.

“School life is so full and busy all the time. You know what I realized today, walking home?”

It was a rhetorical question. He let it hang there, out of a kind of disbelief. But he didn’t want me to answer. Just listen.

“That today was my birthday. I didn’t even know it all morning, all day long. I almost forgot it period, except somehow it came to me walking down the hill. Cause I was by myself and thinking about this week and next week’s calendar.”

He didn’t look up. Just kind of indirectly stared at the corner of the room.

“I forgot about my own birthday.”

But it was more than that. It went deeper. I could feel it. The room weighed extra. Harry saw that his own identity was only tenuously connected to him. To his present life circumstances. It was a grieving that couldn’t quite manifest yet, like the winter couldn’t. It was forestalled by an incredulous disbelief and the enormity of the resulting digestion. This never could happen to me. I wondered at it. I always had in the backgrond some picture of where we are in the year, in the week, in current events. Somehow this stuff was dimmed to a blur for him. The context of no context. The geography of nowhere. I felt badly for him. It was getting near 5:30.

“Dunkin’ Donuts! C’mon Harry, it is not too late. They close at six; we can make it. Do us both good to get in a brisk walk. C’mon. My treat. Still time to celebrate your birthday.”

Dunkin’ Donuts was about six blocks south, past a little old brick church which actually posessed a green lawn, towards the train stations and in the business part of the city. We gradually departed the sheltering university neighborhood feel. Increasing amounts of scurrying workaday or otherwise occupied and hurried people, moving with purpose to not be late for something. Occasionally, a street person. Broken down, limited prospects and a much slower gear. Two donuts each, we figured. That would be appropriate for a fashionably late birthday bash. One of the morsels of Americana which Harry held in high esteem, this donut shop. Hard to say why. But this was years ago. When DD was known for it’s slogan about 51 varieties and counting. Freshly made every day. They lived up to it too. The donut racks and trays lined the back wall behind the counter, and they made a real effort to keep every flavor bin populated. Apricot Cinnamon. Chocolate Peanut. Nothing like nowadays… maybe ten varieties if you’re lucky. Only the colorless best sellers. The accountants were in charge now, no longer the visionaries. The Hispanic waitress whose face Harry liked was on duty. He even ordered a coffee. We sat till closing. It worked out. His mood lightened. Later that night we would cook something marginally more nutritious, like university student spaghetti.

============

Next evening the week was still not quite over yet, and Harry wanted to talk more. It was clear he had been reflecting, and his optimism was back in flow. The dark red walls were doing strange things to the slanting late day sunbeams passing through the window. I had moved down to a chair on the far side of the room near the entrance facing Harry sitting on a cot against the wall nearest to the window. He began by asking what I thought about ghost stories. Then he asked if I ever heard a noise or ‘felt something’ at night during sleep. I wondered whether he thought the building was haunted but quickly gathered he was talking about something more generic, locationless.

Harry’s descriptions were slow. Terse phrases. Hard to tell what portions came from a recounting of direct experience and what from a deeply implanted folklore transmitted by older relatives. A great uncle sitting alone near a lantern after a dinner. For Harry, any legends smacking of tradition carried a weight of truth one dared not simply discount. He began describing them to me. It was a them, but only one came at a time. More than enough to subdue a human stuck in a nether region between dreaming and wakeful terror. Between imagination and visceral certainty. They hunted the forever night for the right kinds of people. What made a person the ‘right’ sort? It wasn’t only my naturally instant question. It was his own — at the root of his searching. Was it so unlikely that it might be the exact sort of indivudual who forgot his own twenty-first birthday?

“You don’t see them. They’re not visible, but you know when they have come. Quiet also. They make no sounds. No change in temperature. I think they know it, can sense it, when you think of them. Even if in a dream. If something stressful happens in a dream, that’s when you absolutely cannot think of them or wonder about their presence. You have to distract yourself. Take a new direction or focus. Otherwise you start half waking up. But can’t make it completely awake. One of them is there! The dream is gone and you are alone in the bed, the room, with it. And it is not friendly.”

He named it. A two or three syllable Chinese name, Taiwanese dialect. I can’t remember it anymore. Then he crossed his arms, fists closed above his chest and neck, shaking them slightly as if in a struggle. That’s what it felt like. When they began exerting their force, their will, contesting with you to try anything: to breathe, to move, to roll over or sit up. It was like those Chinese finger torture children’s toys made of meshed flexible bamboo strips, cylindrical finger gloves — you could get them on but once you tried to apply strength to pull your fingers apart it just became tighter. Your only choice was to give in, relax, and push your fingers closer together which loosened the grip. But Harry quickly pointed out that this was a far more difficult thing when your breathing was involved. And when you felt paralyzed. And when you could sense a menacing spirit being opposing you instead of a child’s toy. The number one thing to avoid was panic! The other peculiar tidbit he mentioned was that when it was happening you couldn’t tell whether you were dreaming or awake. It was more like neither one precisely. More like a third state.

When Harry finished his story we both noticed it had become dark. Long shadows covered the wall and his face. The color had drained from the room. I squinted a bit and found the wall switch. Transitioning back to ordinary conversation, I asked Harry how dangerous it could really get. He told me that there were rumors a couple of people died, stopped breathing too long, in the next district and they were found lifeless in their beds the next morning. Authorities wrapped it up as freak medical conditions but the relatives knew the real score. He shrugged this off in a way that convinced me he wasn’t personally too scared.

It felt good in a way to receive this glimpse into a friend’s foreign cultural minutae. And for his part, Harry trusted me and sensed I would be a respectful listener, and not tell him he was crazy. I should have pressed just slightly further however, perhaps. Maybe I should have asked him what was the best thing to do if someone was sleeping in a room when somebody else was so attacked, and woke up and suspected it. Was there a right intervention?

============

Next day would be a Friday. Fridays were good days. Days for explorations. Usually no special worries unless an unusual end of week test had been scheduled in something. I felt completely unshackled and Harry seemed at ease as well. I put my head to the pillow and briefly took in the indirect beams of a streetlamp diffusing a glow through the window, then closed my eyes in a peaceful mood and fell to sleep.

But round about 3AM I woke up, which was not typical, and turned my head towards the window to take in the rooms dim visuals. My eyes were good for the dark and I could distinguish most everything after a moment. Something drew my attention down below and I leaned myself partly over the bunk’s edge. All was quiet. There was Harry below; I could see his face apparently resting peacefully. Something made me observe for a while; then I heard the faintest of stifled mumbles. A soft truncated hum. It was Harry. Sounded a bit like a distress moan inside a distant nightmare. Gazing with deeper attentiveness I noticed how his face, though sleeping, seemed engaged in a kind of struggle or anxiety. There were faint muscle motions underneath the closed lids of his eyes. Is this what rapid eye movements, REM sleep, looked like? Also, if I studied his throat and lower face in more detail I could detect a stiff discomfort which seemed quite out of keeping with restful relaxation. In fact, there was an unnatural stiffness to his entire upper body and torso. And the manner in which his arms rested at his sides looked wrong. A slight clench defined his fists. Then the cut off moan repeated, nearly inaudible. His lips and mouth carried a tension. I watched unawares for a moment, in a detached way, not yet fully awake enough to connect the dots: it was the seizure he described earlier. It was on me to do something! Harry was in the throes of conflict with the paralyzing spirit. What was I supposed to do?

As I slipped more into my body I realized something. I was unaffected, personally. I felt no sense of fear or danger. I felt completely immune to any sort tangential attack from a demon or a sleep anomaly. I was not able to determine if a real entity was harassing him in his sleep or if his own subjective psychological condition was fomenting physical anxiety. He seemed not to be dreaming normally though. I had socks on my feet, so I lightly stepped over the edge and landed a few feet down on the quiet carpet next to where he was lying. I looked at him a moment and then decided to just softly speak. Real softly, almost a whisper.

“It’s OK Harry, it is alright. You’re good, you’re okay.”

I might have repeated this in part a minute or so later. Hard to recall. I then saw stress drain form his features. What was tight loosened some. He was absolutely silent and motionless and my imagination briefly wondered if his breathing had ceased. But no. The aura felt ordinary and peaceful. I decided he was simply deeply in repose. I tip-toed away to get a sip of water and then softly climbed back up to my bunk, using the end of the bed where my feet went. I did not have enough energy to remain awake long to think about matters, and was soon back asleep. The room once again happily uninvaded.

Harry left early; he had an 8:00 AM lab. By the time I was up and about he’d already gone. By midday I was off on some travel or minor journey, probably to Manhattan. And somehow, as more days transpired and new busy weeks unfolded, there seemed less and less opportunity to revisit our discussion about sleep ghosts, much less for me to broach the subject of what happened that night. Or if Harry even had consciously experienced anything. It was an episode that had run its course. Whatever that experience might yield would only take place years later if at all, and it would do so entirely individually for the two of us.

============

I never saw or heard about Harry again after that school year when we shared a rundown flat, for I switched to a differnt campus in a more rural location. But I think of him on rare occasions, and when I do, it is with a special poignancy. How much I wonder, and would like to know, about how his life unfolded. What line of work he pursued. Or pursued him. Or if he had children. And if he did… what did he tell them about the sleep demons who come to restrict your movement and breathing at darkest lonely night?

_______RS

[ Image : a Europeanized depiction of the “Sleep Nag” which has haunted the fringes of many cultures but seems especially prominent in the Far East. This short article explores the phenomenon and inquires into the controversy around whether it is ‘psychological’ or ‘medical’. Real vs. Memorex? It seems to me a hollow question to ask whether or not something psychological is real. ] 

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