what I apparently said last night after waking up out of a sound sleep:
"Oh, that would be so bad!"
What are you talking about, Kris?
[pause]
"I forgot I'd stopped talking out loud. Sor-ry." *goes back to sleep*
I talk in my sleep. Or, rather, I wake up but not fully, and my evil twin Skippy comes out and starts talking about things. Sometimes I'm dreaming and talking about my dreams, sometimes I seem coherent but I'm not actually making any sense at all.
I only actually hear about this stuff when there's someone else sleeping with me. I have no idea if I do it when I'm by myself; I suspect that I occasionally talk to the cats, but I think I do it a lot more when there's someone to talk to.
In the above case, I'm pretty sure I was carrying on a conversation with Chris inside my own head, in a dream. I was, likely, aware that I was dreaming, and when I woke up enough to disengage whichever switch it is that keeps me from acting out all of my dreams, I just started talking. when it was pointed out to me that I had actually engaged a bit with the real world, I apologized and went back to sleep.
I am a lucid dreamer. I always have been. I have never not had the ability to interact with my dreams, to view them from the first-person perspective and control what was happening. I occasionally will re-dream a dream that had a dissatisfying ending, a dream in which the characters didn't do as I wanted them to do, or where cause and effect were linked up unsatisfyingly.
In my dreams, everyone does as I'd like them to do. People can read my mind, missteps occur when I'm ready and braced for them, frustrations are handled by a bit of judicious editing. I have whole-body, full-color dreams, and I am always aware that I am dreaming. None of this mistaking my nocturnal adventures for reality for me, thank you; I am always aware that my body is asleep and my brain is amusing itself and me with random imaginings. Sometimes, I have a big sign in my dreams that says, "And then..." and suddenly it's a month or ten years later. I skip over all of the boring bits when I dream.
I don't remember as many of my dreams as I used to, unfortunately. I used to be able to remember at least a dream or two a night, and I used to come out in the morning and tell my mom about all my marvelous dreams. She would shake her head and sigh. At the time, I didn't think anything of it, but as an adult, I have to wonder what was going through her head. Perhaps she was pining away for her own childhood dreams, or maybe she was a little bit envious of my nighttime journeys.
I've also read entire books in my sleep, books that would make me rich if I could just write them down physically as I read them in my sleep. Dreaming is sort of like being stoned. Everyone seems brilliant, including yourself, and every book you read is the best one ever. The food all tastes really good. You find yourself explaining Newton's Second Law to a cat, and the cat is nodding and murmuring to itself, 'That explains it.' Odd things happen to you and it all makes sense because you're just very relaxed about everything that's going on.
Um.
Maybe that's just me.
shut up, he explained"I don't think I'm ready for this."
He looks at me, head tilted. "You're ready. I know you're ready."
My mouth bunches and to my shock, I find that there are tears behind my voice. "No. Please."
He shrugs. Turns away.
I am suddenly furious that he has given up so easily. He doesn't care enough to fight.
Doesn't care enough to understand my refusal.
Much later, I come across a piece of fiction he wrote when we were still together. I'd shoved it into the back of my closet, there to jump out and surprise me when I was going through my clothes, looking for things to give away.
I recognize the girl on the page. I know her and I feel sorry for her, because she was me through his eyes. Those cruel eyes. The eyes that declared that nothing I ever did made any sense, that I was too crazy to be reasoned with and all anyone could do was play along.
I finally gave up. Decided that I couldn't win for losing, and lost what little reason I had left. Better to go comfortably crazy than to fight so hard for so little.
No, I whisper, and no again.
There were so many ways in which he was good for me. I remember this, and tell it to myself sometimes. I had fun, I learned a lot, I dared things I wouldn't have normally.
But the crazy part? The crazy part sucked ass.
la la la I can't hear youI won't try to change this world
that rolls on, giant soccer ball
in a game between mad Peruvians
Felipe's got the best kick
this anger confusion thermonuclear
weapons world trade and everyone
and I mean everyone has an agendaexcept maybe me.
I think my world's a little smaller
than it was last December;
I can mother my own inner children
but everyone else's go awry
with or without me.I say to the world, I am putting you down.
—12/10/99
how goes the war?
digging holes in the sand.
