Sleep to Dream?


Just woke from a night of beautiful sleep. My sleep is almost always filled to the brim with fantastical, heartbreaking, heartwarming, inspiring dreams, and I try to make the effort to record these special moments in (non-awakened) time. It is a very personal experience to share such intimate details of one's consciousness, however, and since this is my first time blogging about dreams, I have selected a (less personal) snippet from an October dream:

****I’m wading in cold river at night when a middle-aged man and his son come up to me asking if there is anywhere along the bank they can camp. The man lost his job recently and is homeless with his young child. The river is wild and not safe anywhere, but I tell them that where I stand there is a shelf rock that sticks out and they can at least stand on it/camp? As I stand on the shelf, I can see through the clear water to the smooth rocks below as thundering waters come rushing by, heading down an ominous path toward a waterfall. The man is very afraid, but not because of the dangerous waters, but because he believes that narwhals (I am not kidding you, narwhals! They are swimming all around) will come up and attack him in the night if he stays there, so I direct him to a YMCA nearby where he can stay for free in a bed and it will be warm. He is very grateful...

After getting the homeless man settled at the YMCA and attending a huge post-Phish party at my house (I’ll leave the details of this one out) I find myself cleaning up at my dad’s old service station (a common setting in my dreams). I’m opening mail in his back office, and one flat envelope that ends up being like the rabbit in a hat trick – books related to my field of study keep coming out and coming out. It’s like Christmas! That is, until I learn that my income tax refund is rejected because I was unable to prove that I worked full-time picking mini-bananas (which I did not do but for some reason I was trying to forge documents based on). I am jealous of my friends with full-time jobs who received $1500 back. In the blink of an eye I am now trying to settle all kinds of little dogs and cats in beds to sleep. It’s very cold outside and they are all cuddling with each other in corners of the station – quite charming…****

In all truth, this post was motivated by the desire to share some wisdom from two of my favorite authors, John Steinbeck and Tom Wolfe, on sleep:

"It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it" - John Steinbeck

"In Sleep we lie all naked and alone, in Sleep we are united at the heart of night and darkness, and we are strange and beautiful asleep; for we are dying the darkness and we know no death" - Tom Wolfe

I think most would agree with Steinbeck's intuitive remark. Wolfe's quote, on the other hand, might elicit different reactions. I, for one, find in it a raw and beautiful honesty...what do you think? BEST WISHES FOR A LOVELY DAY!

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