Sunday Scribblings - Sleep (and / or Teeth)

Over at Sunday Scribblings the explanation behind this prompt is:

In honor of Natalie Goldberg, who I am going to hear speak tonight about her new book, I have chosen a prompt from one of her old books, Wild Mind. Here, in her words: "An area not written about much -- but which once thought of becomes a rich vein -- is sleep. Try it. Write about sleep patterns, sleepless nights, sleeping in the day; how two brothers sleep together, two lovers; sleeping outside, beds you've slept in, sleeping on trips, in foreign countries; no sleep. What is sleep, anyway? It's like the old trick of saying your name over and over again until you don't know it anymore. Sleep is the other half of our life, the underbelly. We should explore it."

As Natalie Goldberg's Wild Mind and also Writing Down the Bones used once to be favourite much used books of mine how could I resist joining in again this week.

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Sleep touches me and I fall deep, deep into the the blessed depths of deep, deep sleep

I find myself awake in a dream, knowing that I dream and choosing to continue to dream the dream I'm in

Again I'm falling, tumbling, spinning

With no fear - I do know that I dream - I let myself simply go where the dream takes me

I arrive at what could be an expensive hotel but that I know is a private hospital

Still I refuse to move my body, let the dream take me where it will

I hover through the corridors and into a doctor's room

My body is deposited by two chairs

I wonder which chair is the doctor's chair and which the patients

As its a dream, and I know that I dream, I hold this thought but do not act on it

Now I am lying on a couch
The doctor has arrived

He is dressed in a blue boiler suit
He looks like a plumber
He take a screwdriver and uses it to inspect my feet

He says "The quantum threshold of the ganglia has reached a base point,
"We will have to operate with an acetylene high oxy-propo-butane transformer,
"Its clear that the psycho-physiological bubble is about to burst"

Finally I say:

"You don't expect me to believe any of that do you?"

He says nothing and motions with some plumber's tool towards my feet

"Well at least you got me to speak." I say

"I'd better get changed" he says

He returns wearing a tweed suit, looking every inch the country doctor,

Except that he is wearing rose-tinted spectacles.

"Hold this" he says handing me a bottle of snake oil.
He is leering above me and I'm feeling uneasy yet hopeful too.

The dream fades into black.
I am still aware.
I know I'm asleep.
I hear the body breathing.
I feel the body asleep.
I wait for the next dream.

I'm swept up into the clouds. I'm flying. I am still lucid and still choosing to be passive. A passive component of my dream. In recent lucid dreams any intentional action has broken the dream and sent me straight to the black space between dreams. This is the only way, at the moment, that I can maintain both dream and lucidity.

I let the dream carry me to the top of a mountain.
There I fall asleep in the dream and let myself just dream once more.

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More Sunday Scribblings on sleep and/ or teeth.