theology&geometry

Not eating for a couple of days does strange things to a body and a mind.

Like, for example, causing a dream in which there is a band field show featuring two kids who look just like the Olson twins (circa late Full House), dressed up as The White Stripes, singing “When I Hear My Name.”

Last night I dreamed that I had awesome clandestine closet sex with Barack Obama at a party.

And then I felt really, really bad for doing such a thing to Michelle.

I can’t sleep in my childhood bedroom anymore.

This has been a problem for a while now. Every time my head hits the pillow and my eyes flutter shut in the darkness, I see things. Shapes of things looming. Eyes watching. Bad things. When I finally get ahold of myself and drift off to sleep, this absurd cycle of anxiety-ridden dreams and nightmares gets started.

Just now I had entered that delicious limbo phase when the conscious mind starts powering down and starts churning out all those nonsensical phrases and imagery that turn into dreams, and I went through no less than three bad dreams that I forced myself to wake up from. The last one is the only one I can really remember. I am leaving a building — work, presumably, because I look down and see my badge on a lanyard — and walking briskly in a parking lot. It’s dark out. The breeze kicks up and takes me with it — straight up, like I’m on an invisible elevator. I realize I’m dreaming and decide to just go with it and will myself ever higher (what’s the worst that could happen?) and my eye level gets nearly flush with the top of the building, which is old and made of bricks, and I see something that I can’t quite make out. It’s moving, and it’s menacing.

I woke myself up when I cried out.

That’s fucked up. 

But dreams like that ALWAYS happen to me in this room. I’ve documented some of them. I hate sleeping here. Hate it. The whole night is fraught with pointless peril and I have no idea why.

The thing is, there is no reason for me to have issues with this room. I don’t recall anything bad ever happening to me in this room. (Or anywhere else, really. I had a good childhood.) Nothing bad has happened to anybody else in this room, as far as I know. I have made a lot of really good memories in this room. Granted, they’ve painted the walls and redecorated completely, so it doesn’t look anything like the Pepto Bismol-pink monstrosity I adored as a kid, but it’s still the same damn room.

It’s not like this house has any juicy history. My parents built it 18 or so years ago and we’re the only family to have ever lived here. There are no Native American burial grounds below the foundation, as far as we know.

What gives?

Perhaps it’s all this violent Civil War art all over the walls. Or the weird dissonance between that and the unicorn collection on the dresser. Maybe it’s the furniture, which used to be my great-grandmother’s. Maybe it’s the mattress. But I don’t think so. It’s new.

Is it significant that this is the room where I had my first lucid dream, and where I’ve had probably 75 percent of all my lucid dreams?

Is it worth mentioning that when I lived here I battled with sleep paralysis a lot, and had a lot of angsty nightmares (albeit while sleeping in the room my brother now claims)? I would wake up fighting demon babies trying to scratch my eyeballs out. My dad would regularly counsel me on how to invoke God to get Satan out of my dreams, and I’d roll my eyes like a good teenager.

I don’t like thinking about this stuff, because dreams are weird enough when they’re actually pleasant. The control freak in me really hates having to let go long enough to fall asleep when there’s a good chance that I’m going to get spooked into waking back up. My heart can’t take the surge of adrenaline that shoots through it every time I have to dredge my consciousness up out of the murky depths of another nightmare.

But it’s 4 in the morning and I would like to go to sleep. I’m just scared of what’s waiting for me on the other side.

I’m leaving a light on.

[crossposted at NA]

• I woke up yesterday with a brand new grey hair. Funny thing is, I can probably pinpoint the exact moment it sprouted Thursday night.

• Our office calendars use the Futurama credit-sequence font for the names of the months. This pleases me to an exceptional degree.

• Speaking of calendars, I still don’t have one in the apartment for 2008. I’ve also decided that I need a datebook so I can write down appointments and meetings and stuff, which seem to be occurring with alarming frequency these days. Actually, I’ve decided I need a smartphone. I realize there’s a substantial price difference there, but I can get a pretty killer corporate discount on several different models of refurbished Blackberries. I’m just not sure that I should get a refurb. Anyone have any strong opinions on that?

• It’s not raining right now. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? Just kidding. Maybe we’ll see some sunshine this weekend. I suppose I could check the Weather Channel, but that would require more effort than a throwaway guess, and this is a blog, therefore that’s a big no-no.

• I hate the phrase “big no-no.”

• Yesterday I waited in line at Circle K with part of the WMC-TV crew, including a regular reporter whose name I should probably know but don’t (because I rarely watch the local news; sorry, but I’m usually working during it). I had hoped he was buying scandalous things so I could come gossip about TV reporters hopped up on No Doz and Red Bull and pork rinds, but I didn’t see what he bought so that idea was a bust.

• My managing editor told me they held up my Martin Luther King special coverage front page on CNN yesterday morning. I didn’t see that either.

• I dreamed in Pixar-like cartoon last night. It even involved a kitchen at a restaurant, but there were no rodents or French people. It was quite beautiful the way my brain rendered things (for example, a wax-paper bag of beans … wtf?) and it was almost as if I was kind of floating through the atmosphere, observing the goings-on of the kitchen without actually being a part of the story. Weird. I’ll try to collect the memory scraps and post about it over at NA.

• The Tigers play tonight in hopes of making it to the championship. It’s weird living in a town where there is such vehement and loyal support for a college sports team that actually wins a lot. Murfreesboro, it ain’t. Slowly but surely I’m beginning to understand Tigermania, and I don’t altogether disapprove.

Because sometimes I dream about Tom Cruise, Vladimir Putin, machine guns, and political unrest.

I’m having the worst time falling asleep tonight. I suspect that has a lot to do with getting totally shitfaced at 3 p.m. and then passing out at 6, only to wake up and lounge around, still fairly tipsy, until bedtime.

I laid down at 1:30, read a bit, then turned out the light and tossed and turned through a series of dream-limbo misfires — the kind that put you in such unpleasant scenerios so that you’re sure to wake up before you actually fall asleep. The only one I can remember is a weirdly loud buzzing going on in my head that startled me awake. I woke up, flipped over, and fell into another unpleasant dream. And again and again. Until mild desperation set in.

And as soon as I was actually slipping into some real sleep, I heard a door slam and some shouting out in the parking lot. And, because my Grandmaw taught me well and I am a nosy creature, I slid open my window to listen to the commotion. And lo there was profane name-calling. And the woman getting into the car said something about “That’s why I won’t be up on you again and you can’t even pay your rent!” And there were strings of epithets that would make sailors swoon. And there were car doors slammed.

And when the car rumbled its way out of the lot — I actually half expected it to go tearing out — I tried to get back to sleep, only to slip once more into uncomfortable near-dreams, and be awakened once more by the slamming of a car door, at which point I realized that crazy car lady had returned to the no-rent-paying gentlemen with whom she’d just had a tiff, and they proceeded to hash out their problems in the parking lot — again — at an elevated volume. At which point my downstairs neighbor (who will be getting a cake from me for this) ventured outside and said, “Look guys, I’m not interested in justice — I FUCKING LIVE HERE! — so could you go inside or go home or just cut it out because I FUCKING LIVE HERE!”

After all that excitement, I’m finding it hard to get to sleep. Which sucks. Because I got lots of shiz to do tomorrow.

Weird, weird dream last night. I was chewing on some sort of fish or small-animal bones (why?) and I broke my front tooth. It hurt and looked ridiculous. I was so embarrassed, but couldn’t concentrate on my pitiful mouth because I was too busy trying to evacuate a house that was quickly becoming uninhabitable.

According to some dream web sites, dreaming about losing teeth indicates that you’re self-conscious about something, or feeling powerless. It can also mean — if you’re religious — that you’re straying away from god and putting all your stock in the words of men. The Chinese believe that if you dream your teeth are falling out it means you’ve been telling lies.

This all seems to be incredibly appropriate, since Amber, Phil and I had one of those discussions last night. About god and death and meaning. Amber’s rooting for the romantic notion of the cosmic ball of energy. Phil’s counting on aliens monitoring us. Me? I’ve never been more confused in my life. And pissed that this riddle could either be a cruel, lifelong joke, or a beautiful blink in time that I might miss because I’m so busy trying to figure it out.