RANDOM SLEEP TALK

My mind runs 24/7. There are many things rattling around in this familiar small space at the same time. The resulting chaos reminds me of dreams where there are many people who have absolutely no connection with each other except that you have known or seen them, frolicking together at a non-existent and bizarre event.

For instance, your Birkenstock-shod kindergarten teacher, one of your ex-flames from another decade, the Priest from your sisters wedding and your neighbor's nephew may be snorkeling together in a human aquarium while you watch from your restaurant table where a nurse is administering flu shots. The beef is bloody, but the wine is good. The dream cast is trying desperately to communicate with you, but all you get is bubbles. You never know whether you got the flu or not, or if anybody drowned or suffered a barracuda bite, because the dream just abruptly ends. The result is extremely unsatisfying.

Now, my thoughts are not usually as chaotic as my example, but they can be. Years ago I had a dream of being chased for hours by people with dogs heads up the stairs and around the roof of a high rise. A clock struck five and the dog-headed pursuers walked calmly to the edge and jumped off. Salvador Dali shook his finger at me and said "I told you so." I went back to my desk and worked through the night. Well, we all know what that dream was about. I can laugh now that I'm retired. Its even more humorous if I count my savings from all those years of hard work.

Usually its just a matter of going to bed with thoughts in my head and waking up with some kind of dialog still running. Maybe its the grocery list, maybe its the words for an important letter: sometimes its a prayer. If I read or study before bed, I will wake up repeating the lesson. If I engage in listening to music, a song may appear. More often than not, it is 3 to 5 unrelated items that have been categorized for action during my somnambulance. The beauty is, they make sense and I know what to do with them.

All of us have said "Let me sleep on it." I think there is more to this than an excuse to delay a decision. For me, sleep is a thought process where I am able to thrash about possibilities and alternate conclusions, solve that math problem and find the rubber bands I was looking for last week.

There are no restrictions on your internal processes when you are resting and no voices to discourage your natural creativity. I wake up with some of my best ideas and rid myself of some of the worst when I'm in the "z" zone.

I'm sure there are experts that will disagree with me, but I am firmly rooted in the feeling that sleep is a highly sophisticated decoding process for mind and body; a cozy and peaceful cove, or a carnival of encrypted complexities strewn with sights and sounds that only have meaning to the owner. Rejuvenation is only one significant purpose of rest.

Personally, I think it takes great faith just to go to sleep. What if something happens and you miss it? What if sleep is reality and the rest is the dream? What if your only true love is the one you meet there? What if the people in the aquarium are the most significant and closest allies you will ever have? What if you don't wake up? What if you do? What if those were real dogs in human suits? ;)

Methods abound to cure these issues, but drugs interfere with the dreaming (yes, in color), which I would miss. I also would miss late night peeks at the moon and stars and the quiet to think or write uninterrupted. I would miss patterns of the moonlight shining through the blinds at 3AM and the sound of my loved ones breathing. I would miss the communion with my cat, who shares my sleeplessness.

I haven't tried the sleep number bed, but I think my number is 0-4. I'd get up to do something else anyway and it would probably be an idea I got when I laid down.

All this from a chronic insomniac; practicing my avocation.

I better stop and get to bed.