Dream a little dream…
Last night was one of those nights where I was so sensitive to sound that I could feel it. I can feel it all over, but it’s most annoying on my cheeks and eyes. Closing my eyes doesn’t always help.
I know it sounds weird, but I can feel it, and the differences in freqencies. When it’s particularly bad, I can sometimes amuse myself by holding out my hands to sense the direction sounds are coming from. It’s like hearing with my hands.
(Which brings a whole new perspective to that comedian with the sock puppet who screams at people, “Talk to the hand!”)
Thunderstorms generally lull me to sleep or if I’m already sleeping, send me off deeper into la-la land. Last night’s woke me up and left me jittery from from the sensation of the thunderclaps crashing into my body. Fortunately, it was brief and moved on quickly.
Sleeping next to the freezer generally doesn’t bother me. After the storm last night it quickly became irritating. I got up for a snack and just opening the wrapper of a granola bar seemed as loud as the thunderclap. Don’t get me started on the crunching.
This failed to help me get back to sleep. Somewhere around 4:00, I said the hell with it, snatched the pillows and blankets from the bed and headed for the couch, closing the bedroom door behind me.
The power supply for the PC’s speakers makes a barely audible 60 Hz hum. It might as well have been a brass band. I found myself crawling around under the desk in the dark unplugging things until the noise stopped.
The tick, tick, tick of the quartz clock on the wall was the next thing to go. Finally, silence. Ten or fifteen minutes later, just as I was drifting off, the fridge started. All I could do was laugh.
When sleep finally came, I barely skimmed the surface. It was filled with vivd dreams. And while I was thinking of things while I slept, mainly about how much my joints ached, I couldn’t quite pull off lucid dreaming.
I had done so to an amazing extent on Saturday morning. I wasn’t even trying, which seems to be when those sorts of things work best.
I was tired from the week, and although I’d gone to bed early, slept very well and slept in for over an hour past my usual waking time, after breakfast—eggs scrambled with salsa—I went back to bed.
This turned into a solid three hour nap. I seemed to cycle well, working through the several stages of sleep in the appropriate order instead of running directly to dreaming and getting stuck there.
Towards the end of the second cycle a very pleasant dream became lucid. In the dream I was lying in spoons with my arms around a guy as he slept. (No idea who.) My left arm was wrapped around and resting on his right shoulder. I could feel the back of his head against my shoulder.
The dream became lucid when I started in with, “Why can’t this happen in waking life?” Followed by the concious decision to see how far it would play out. I could feel him just as if he was real. I moved my thumb against the softness of his neck while with my fingers I felt the firmness of his collarbone and shoulder. With my other hand I lightly stroked his belly. All the while I could feel him breathing.
I found this really amusing since I damned well knew I was dreaming the whole thing. But the physical sensations were so perfectly real I could hardly believe it. I kept testing them and getting the same responses. It was truly amazing.
It went on like that for several mintues.
Eventually it reached thepoint where the cycle was ending and I couldn’t maintain it. I knew that another cycle would take me well into the afternoon and I wanted to know exactly what my real position was, so I decided to wake up.
In the few seconds it took for consciousness to take over, my sleeping partner evaporated and my arms emptied as I came to. I could feel this too as he slipped away.
Waking, I found that I was lying on my back. Not on my side at all. I hadn’t been clutching a pillow or other surrogate either. The entire thing was only in my head and I’d been able to purposely direct it.
I concluded that I really need to get laid.
