Waking Up as a Stranger

Source: AI generated/Canva

It happens sometimes that I wake up in a strange place and don't know where I am. I feel the presence of my body, the weight of the blanket, the pressure from the bed. I hear sounds from the street, but I can't locate myself.

Then, memory finds a trace of yesterday, and a place appears. The sensations are the same, but the experience of presence suddenly changes. My freewheeling self cogs into the world. The room where I lie becomes a room in a particular house, in a particular city. The cogging between me and the world gives me opportunities for actions that could not be imagined before. ­For example, I can decide where I want to go.

The situation is similar to having a map of a city but not knowing where you are on the map. If you can't ask anyone, the best strategy is to go to a street corner to read the street names and try to find them on the map. But even if you are told where you are on the map, you may not know which way to go. The worst-case scenario is to take a chance on a direction, walk a block, and then check the street names at the next intersection.

When I wake up in a strange place, I am satisfied knowing where I am. Aboriginal Australians also like to know which direction they are facing. They lay down with their heads in a certain direction. This ritual locks them into the direction of the world. Their experience of space is richer than ours. For them, a place always appears with directions. They talk about their west foot. The reason is that their landscape is poor in landmarks. There are no street corners in the Australian semi-desert where you can read the names. Therefore, they can't afford to lose their direction.

It has happened that I have woken up not knowing who I am (the few times this has happened have been after days of strong sun and plenty of wine). The experience of a body and a world is still there, but the mind is without identity. Then, memory finds a person, a name. Consciousness cogs into the self. The memory finds its basis and can link to the other experiences of the self. The process is frightening only after the cogging—when there is someone who can be frightened by the possibility of losing themselves. It has never happened that I have known where I am but not who.

Marcel Proust has an excellent description of the phenomenon: "...when I awoke at midnight, not knowing where I was, I could not be sure at first who I was; I had only the most rudimentary sense of existence, such as may lurk and flicker in the depths of an animal’s consciousness; I was more destitute of human qualities than the cave-dweller; but then the memory, not yet of the place in which I was, but of various other places where I had lived, and might now very possibly be, would come like a rope let down from heaven...[and] helped me to restore gradually the original features of my self."

The poet Paul Valéry writes of such a process: "One should not say 'I am waking' but 'there is waking' because the self is the result, the end, the ultimate proof."

It happened when I was young that I woke up next to a woman and didn't know who was next to me. The feeling was especially strange when you had just dreamt of another woman. Running your hand over the foreign body rarely gives any clues (the hand is bad at recognizing another person). The scent is much more identifying. In lucky cases, the "I" cogs into a "you."

Philosopher of religion Martin Buber says that the I-you connection is more fundamental than our notion of the independent self or the you. Developmentally, this is true: The newborn infant cannot distinguish itself from the mother. For the couple in the bed, however, it is too late—it is a self that experiences the I-you connection. There is no "we" that can wake up.

It will happen that I do not...