Sleep and I have never been cozy bedfellows, for reasons both physical and psychological. For one, you're so defenseless--sprawled there on your bed with most every sense diminished beyond usefulness, a half-corpse waiting for the predators of the night to shred you with claws of sharp, swift death. For another, sickness manifests itself in the darkest bowels of the night more so than in the healing light of day--when the body is repairing itself in REM sleep, things can and do go hideously wrong. Dying in your sleep may be a peaceful way to go, but personally, I want to have that last burst of adrenaline before I'm dragged out of here.
And then there are the dreams.
The moonscape in the deeper part of my psyche holds creatures that sincerely do not appreciate any kind of illumination, be it in the form of visible light or from intrusive inquiry. They rise up over the rim of their craters when I dream; dark tentacles grasping for purchase on powdery rock, seeking the intruder into their world of shadows. Escaping their grip is painful, and leaves me gasping on the edge of tears when I do rise to wakefulness.
But every once in a while, the spirit realm lays a gentling hand upon my brow, soothing away the helpless, strangled feeling, and grants me a brief respite. Then dreams, and sleeping, lose some of their ragged edges, smoothing out into something intriguing and memorable. Oh, they may be filled with guns, corpses (not mobile ones--zombies hold not a iota of sway in my subconscious), and random glee-filled violence, but it's all in good fun. And every once in a blue moon I have cameos--people who walk onstage with their knapsacks full of sweet memories and honorable (or wickedly not-so-honorable) intentions. Then I linger, chasing them through the friendlier realms of my dream worlds, pursuing the joy that the dream brings as much as the visiting doppelganger itself.
The challenge I face in my waking life if eerily similar. Learning to chase the beautiful things in life instead of being pursued by monstrous figments of my imagination is a hard chore for me. I have always been haunted by the specter of "hard work is its own reward"--that soul and body crushing folk wisdom that has been cold comfort to the huddled masses over the decades. As I pass through this many, varied, and opportunity-riddled world, I am coming to find the lack of truth in that time honored phrase. For if hard work is its own reward, why do people pull in paychecks? That's an additional reward, above and beyond the hard work they've done. It's unraveling right before my eyes, and I'm not going to say I don't find a certain amount of relief in its demise.
Dreams, the kind you imagine when awake, have always been a beautiful thing to me. In other people. I've had a hard time convincing myself that my dreams of authorship are worth pursuing, seeing as how they are not about hard work, in the "coal mine" kind of way, with back breaking physical labor that lets you know at the end of the day that you're "Another day older and deeper in debt". But now that the heavy weight of unacknowledged drudgery is sloughing away from my shoulders, I'm finding it easier to believe in my own waking dreams.
And then there are the dreams.
The moonscape in the deeper part of my psyche holds creatures that sincerely do not appreciate any kind of illumination, be it in the form of visible light or from intrusive inquiry. They rise up over the rim of their craters when I dream; dark tentacles grasping for purchase on powdery rock, seeking the intruder into their world of shadows. Escaping their grip is painful, and leaves me gasping on the edge of tears when I do rise to wakefulness.
But every once in a while, the spirit realm lays a gentling hand upon my brow, soothing away the helpless, strangled feeling, and grants me a brief respite. Then dreams, and sleeping, lose some of their ragged edges, smoothing out into something intriguing and memorable. Oh, they may be filled with guns, corpses (not mobile ones--zombies hold not a iota of sway in my subconscious), and random glee-filled violence, but it's all in good fun. And every once in a blue moon I have cameos--people who walk onstage with their knapsacks full of sweet memories and honorable (or wickedly not-so-honorable) intentions. Then I linger, chasing them through the friendlier realms of my dream worlds, pursuing the joy that the dream brings as much as the visiting doppelganger itself.
The challenge I face in my waking life if eerily similar. Learning to chase the beautiful things in life instead of being pursued by monstrous figments of my imagination is a hard chore for me. I have always been haunted by the specter of "hard work is its own reward"--that soul and body crushing folk wisdom that has been cold comfort to the huddled masses over the decades. As I pass through this many, varied, and opportunity-riddled world, I am coming to find the lack of truth in that time honored phrase. For if hard work is its own reward, why do people pull in paychecks? That's an additional reward, above and beyond the hard work they've done. It's unraveling right before my eyes, and I'm not going to say I don't find a certain amount of relief in its demise.
Dreams, the kind you imagine when awake, have always been a beautiful thing to me. In other people. I've had a hard time convincing myself that my dreams of authorship are worth pursuing, seeing as how they are not about hard work, in the "coal mine" kind of way, with back breaking physical labor that lets you know at the end of the day that you're "Another day older and deeper in debt". But now that the heavy weight of unacknowledged drudgery is sloughing away from my shoulders, I'm finding it easier to believe in my own waking dreams.
