Blog Dis
On a bed of roses
2024-08-08
Sleeping Beauty conveys the ideal of being human, I should think, because her peaceful slumber is the stuff of wishful thinking. Only teens and those in their mid-twenties can sleep like her, for hour upon hour, sometimes surpassing the mark of 12 hours at one full stretch. Try to re-imagine what this must feel like to be able to sleep with serenity for such a length of time, notwithstanding the fairytale that Sleeping Beauty had a spell cast on her and could only wake up if she received a kiss from her true love.
And then there are the dreams that kick-start our periods of wakefulness, often times disrupting the cycle that we so desperately cherish. I can't sleep beyond six hours any more, regardless of how hard I try or want to sleep, when I roll over and pretend that there is no alarm on weekends. To think that one sleep lasting up to ten hours might occur once in a blue moon is enough to add this rare quality to my wish list. When I returned to Canada, after my Machu Picchu hike in Peru, I did in fact sleep for 10 hours straight, which only proved to me that completely draining my battery, by way physical exhaustion, sleep deprivation and jet-lag are the special sauce, the exception if will.
Forget about attempting to control dreams through the practiced method of directed dreaming. I only know that if I eat late at night, my dreams take a turn down the winding road of weirdville. As an example, the other week I ate spicy salsa sauce with corn chips and I later dreamt that my father called me to tell me that my mother had died at 9 pm the night before. And in the dream, my hands began to shake and I started to cry, before I said to my father, "Hey! you can't be telling me this because you're dead!" Try falling back to sleep after a whopper of a dream like that. My dream book tells me these kinds of dreams have everything to do with transformation and that a change is forthcoming. Dare I dream this forthcoming change will mean I'll be able to sleep longer?
"In your dreams, maybe," says Sleeping Beauty with ironical sarcasm, who'd rather be up and about and planting her lush wet lips on the mouth of her Prince Charming. Sleeping through eternity, for some, is a form of punishment, to waste away the precious hours during which you could be reading an amazing book of fantasy fiction like my novel POM 😆 or looking at phenomenal photos, listening to music, eating divine food or engaging in intimacy w/ your significant other or all of the above, to include watching a movie in the background. A good sleep hardly seems to measure up much less compare to these luxuries. Yet, sleep and its power to alter your brain waves is still a potent force even for the slightly less younger crowd. One time when I was returning from the Middle East, I had to check into the airport early, as you do in many countries where terrorism is spawned like comic book characters, and after being awake for almost 24 hours, when I finally boarded my flight from Amman, Jordan to Frankfurt, Germany to make my connection, the plane took off, served travelers their muffin and juice, and subsequently landed without so much as one of my eyelids opening. I woke up when everyone was disembarking, without any memory of the flight whatsoever. I only remember having tied my purse strap around my ankle to prevent sticky fingers from fingering inside, and then I ensured that my seatbelt was in place; I don't fly without my seatbelt fastened. I never sleep like this, unless I am beyond the point of exhaustion, such as when I hiked Machu Picchu.
Sleeping Beauty was forced into her state of slumber by a duplicitous witch with nasty powers. We, as regular humans, however, are not trapped inside a fairytale. We must employ other methods to ensure a great slumber: exhaustion, sex, copious amounts of potato juice and the occasional indifference to the regimented world of alarm clocks.
May your next sleep take you to a nether world of fun.
And then there are the dreams that kick-start our periods of wakefulness, often times disrupting the cycle that we so desperately cherish. I can't sleep beyond six hours any more, regardless of how hard I try or want to sleep, when I roll over and pretend that there is no alarm on weekends. To think that one sleep lasting up to ten hours might occur once in a blue moon is enough to add this rare quality to my wish list. When I returned to Canada, after my Machu Picchu hike in Peru, I did in fact sleep for 10 hours straight, which only proved to me that completely draining my battery, by way physical exhaustion, sleep deprivation and jet-lag are the special sauce, the exception if will.
Forget about attempting to control dreams through the practiced method of directed dreaming. I only know that if I eat late at night, my dreams take a turn down the winding road of weirdville. As an example, the other week I ate spicy salsa sauce with corn chips and I later dreamt that my father called me to tell me that my mother had died at 9 pm the night before. And in the dream, my hands began to shake and I started to cry, before I said to my father, "Hey! you can't be telling me this because you're dead!" Try falling back to sleep after a whopper of a dream like that. My dream book tells me these kinds of dreams have everything to do with transformation and that a change is forthcoming. Dare I dream this forthcoming change will mean I'll be able to sleep longer?
"In your dreams, maybe," says Sleeping Beauty with ironical sarcasm, who'd rather be up and about and planting her lush wet lips on the mouth of her Prince Charming. Sleeping through eternity, for some, is a form of punishment, to waste away the precious hours during which you could be reading an amazing book of fantasy fiction like my novel POM 😆 or looking at phenomenal photos, listening to music, eating divine food or engaging in intimacy w/ your significant other or all of the above, to include watching a movie in the background. A good sleep hardly seems to measure up much less compare to these luxuries. Yet, sleep and its power to alter your brain waves is still a potent force even for the slightly less younger crowd. One time when I was returning from the Middle East, I had to check into the airport early, as you do in many countries where terrorism is spawned like comic book characters, and after being awake for almost 24 hours, when I finally boarded my flight from Amman, Jordan to Frankfurt, Germany to make my connection, the plane took off, served travelers their muffin and juice, and subsequently landed without so much as one of my eyelids opening. I woke up when everyone was disembarking, without any memory of the flight whatsoever. I only remember having tied my purse strap around my ankle to prevent sticky fingers from fingering inside, and then I ensured that my seatbelt was in place; I don't fly without my seatbelt fastened. I never sleep like this, unless I am beyond the point of exhaustion, such as when I hiked Machu Picchu.
Sleeping Beauty was forced into her state of slumber by a duplicitous witch with nasty powers. We, as regular humans, however, are not trapped inside a fairytale. We must employ other methods to ensure a great slumber: exhaustion, sex, copious amounts of potato juice and the occasional indifference to the regimented world of alarm clocks.
May your next sleep take you to a nether world of fun.
