>>687750Everyone who pretty much lives /out/ has that one thing that haunts their nightmares. After a while it's not even traumatic; they just know that every time they lay their head down, they'll dream about it, and because they're hard men, they sleep soundly anyway. For a lot of people who work near the water, it's drowning, dreaming about getting a line around the ankle and not quite being able to reach it, or cut it, or untie the hellish gordian knot that someone tied around your ankle. Sometimes the water is cold and dark, and sometimes it's glass-clear and warm as blood, but the result is the same. Ever see that video of a deranged 'nam vet in Louisiana gut-shooting a cop repeatedly? Your more sensitive police officer never got over that. For an Alaskan fishing and hunting guide I know, it's getting eaten by a bear. He's hunted maybe a hundred coastal browns in his career, and only had one very close call, but he sees what they do to carcasses, and how they fight with each other. He doesn't have any delusions about getting out of it, the way a diver might cut his way out of a snarl. In these dreams, he is caught by surprise and held like a salmon between the bear's paws while it peels off first his clothing, sometimes a parka or a sleeping bag, and then his skin. He sees bears skin salmon this way every day in the summer, but he keeps going out anyway.
We all die, and we will all experience pain. There comes a time when you have to make peace with maybe dying painfully.
