Waking Womb

As is suggested by Julia Kristeva in her essay, Powers of Horror, a state of "in-betweenness" has the ability to paralyze the mind.  The uncertainty of such mediatory phenomena is what compels the psyche to transmute this experience, or in the language of Sigmund Freud, sublimate that which traumatizes.  However, unawareness as to the origin of a feeling of fear could be said to aid the artistic process, as it allows the psyche to invent this origin.

Upon waking one morning earlier this week, I realized that it was not yet necessary for me to rise from bed, so I closed my eyes in the hope of falling back asleep.  As I began to drift off, I suddenly heard the distinct whine of a feline engaged in battle in the alley beneath my window.  However, I soon found myself listening to the conversation of a fictitious couple beyond the premises of my own domicile, and too, the inquisitive mewing of their house cat.  Somehow, the creature had made its way from one apartment to the next - and I could now feel every whisker of its face and each of its slender legs brush against me as it came sauntering across my bed.  I shuddered; having jostled myself awake, I realized that I had just dreamed this encounter - an experience as palpable as the comforter that enswathed my body.  

I would characterize this mode of consciousness in much the same way that Kristeva characterizes the experience of birth.  In both cases, the experience is such that cannot be easily compartmentalized on either side of a dichotomy, (here, the examples are waking life/dream and prenatal/postnatal.)  However, though my psyche could and can not easily categorize this experience during the twilight of dream-state (with a house cat that may or may not exist,) it is now viscerally connected to my being; the experience was terrifying, for it unwed dream from its isolated position in the nether region of my world; however, its comprehend-ability requires invention; for, though I felt a house cat glide across my body, the cat simply does not exist in this realm.  The question remains: is there any other?