Wake Up Dreaming
I don’t think I can ever forget one night’s interrupted dreaming. I was bone tired and did not want to be burdened with any kind of thoughts. Anyone who has had his sleep interrupted but has not woken up can sympathize with my feelings. There has been a time since, as a graduate student in a very long night class after working an unusually long day, when I began to fall asleep in class. Dream overlay the wake-a-day world of the classroom, and superimposed on actual reality was the incoherent construct of my imperfectly functioning mind. This intrusion of the real world on my sleep was something like it.
I knew that I was in Ireland, at 6 Aldergrove, lying in my bed on my side of the room I shared with John. There were several things going on in my life at that time and in my dream state I was aware of them all. Uncourageously, I did not want to have my rest troubled by them. Though I had been truthful in dealing with the ending of one relationship and the beginning of another, there was some gray area in which I did not practice full disclosure, and it weighed heavily on my conscience. There was also a fight that I had coming up which had been built up in the boxing club to be a battle of behemoths, in which I was to fight one of my good friends. It was a cause of trepidation. There was a definite rift in the house between the Irish and the Americans, not only because we Americans were not afraid of a pint or two, but also because we were not nearly as conservative as the Irish in general; socially, politically, and religiously. Also, I, as most students do, had to pay very close attention to fiscal discipline. All these things came together to harass my mind and keep me from plummeting to the depths of my subconscious, where I could find the sustenance necessary to rejuvenate my mind.
I have seen sleep studies being conducted on public television where the subject has wires attached to his head and there is a monitor that graphs the amount of brainwave activity as an indicator of the level of consciousness of the subject. I am a complete layman when it comes to the science of attaching wires to someone’s head while they sleep, but the program was convincing enough for me to come away with the impression that a person’s level of consciousness rises and falls throughout the sleep cycle, and that the most nourishing sleep occurs at the deepest depths of one’s consciousness. As if magically, my level of subconscious consciousness rose, but I woke up without having woken all the way up.
I suddenly knew that I was back home in Eastern Massachusetts, safely and soundly lying in the bed that I was most comfortable in, free from the situational worries of my year abroad in Ireland. I knew that my closest friends were nearby and that we would meet at some time in the near future to raise a glass in celebration of our youth. I knew that my family, parents and siblings, were all close at hand to lend the succor and support I had come to rely on to frame my life as a whole. I was calmed, reassured, and happy that all of the burdens troubling my sleep had been removed. It was like the reward for having endured that time, and having successfully navigated the waters of murky ethics, conflict, and want. I was relieved, and heaved a deep and heavy sigh, and settled in to resume the sleep I so richly deserved.
This comfortable bliss lasted a very short time. There was a long, loud, persistent wailing that woke me up and would not let me sleep any longer. It woke me all the way up. I opened my eyes. The horizon was dusty dun colored baked mud with small humps marching away into the distance. The sky was a smear of scarlets and maroons with a grey gauze of high clouds dabbed in. I was lying on the roof of a roundhouse in a Sahelian compound amid drying millet cakes and the muezzin was calling the faithful to the sunrise prayer. On and on he bellowed into the morning, “Allah hu Akbar! Y’allah, salaat, salaat!” I sat up and pawed around for my Red Sox hat, knowing that nothing else that could happen that day could possibly be stranger than the day’s beginning.
Having extremely vivid dreams is one of mefloquine’s many known and documented side effects. I know that the mefloquine, the malaria prophylaxis I had taken the night before, had worked this side effect on me. Yet the three realities that I had experienced in such a short period of time were all as real to me as the reality that I am now experiencing. Since that day I have been half expecting to be involved in some mundane task like mowing the lawn or driving to work and suddenly wake up on another planet or deep in the jungle of Borneo or Brazil and to have a known recent history, complete with memories, waiting for me to pick it up and carry on like I did that day.
I knew that I was in Ireland, at 6 Aldergrove, lying in my bed on my side of the room I shared with John. There were several things going on in my life at that time and in my dream state I was aware of them all. Uncourageously, I did not want to have my rest troubled by them. Though I had been truthful in dealing with the ending of one relationship and the beginning of another, there was some gray area in which I did not practice full disclosure, and it weighed heavily on my conscience. There was also a fight that I had coming up which had been built up in the boxing club to be a battle of behemoths, in which I was to fight one of my good friends. It was a cause of trepidation. There was a definite rift in the house between the Irish and the Americans, not only because we Americans were not afraid of a pint or two, but also because we were not nearly as conservative as the Irish in general; socially, politically, and religiously. Also, I, as most students do, had to pay very close attention to fiscal discipline. All these things came together to harass my mind and keep me from plummeting to the depths of my subconscious, where I could find the sustenance necessary to rejuvenate my mind.
I have seen sleep studies being conducted on public television where the subject has wires attached to his head and there is a monitor that graphs the amount of brainwave activity as an indicator of the level of consciousness of the subject. I am a complete layman when it comes to the science of attaching wires to someone’s head while they sleep, but the program was convincing enough for me to come away with the impression that a person’s level of consciousness rises and falls throughout the sleep cycle, and that the most nourishing sleep occurs at the deepest depths of one’s consciousness. As if magically, my level of subconscious consciousness rose, but I woke up without having woken all the way up.
I suddenly knew that I was back home in Eastern Massachusetts, safely and soundly lying in the bed that I was most comfortable in, free from the situational worries of my year abroad in Ireland. I knew that my closest friends were nearby and that we would meet at some time in the near future to raise a glass in celebration of our youth. I knew that my family, parents and siblings, were all close at hand to lend the succor and support I had come to rely on to frame my life as a whole. I was calmed, reassured, and happy that all of the burdens troubling my sleep had been removed. It was like the reward for having endured that time, and having successfully navigated the waters of murky ethics, conflict, and want. I was relieved, and heaved a deep and heavy sigh, and settled in to resume the sleep I so richly deserved.
This comfortable bliss lasted a very short time. There was a long, loud, persistent wailing that woke me up and would not let me sleep any longer. It woke me all the way up. I opened my eyes. The horizon was dusty dun colored baked mud with small humps marching away into the distance. The sky was a smear of scarlets and maroons with a grey gauze of high clouds dabbed in. I was lying on the roof of a roundhouse in a Sahelian compound amid drying millet cakes and the muezzin was calling the faithful to the sunrise prayer. On and on he bellowed into the morning, “Allah hu Akbar! Y’allah, salaat, salaat!” I sat up and pawed around for my Red Sox hat, knowing that nothing else that could happen that day could possibly be stranger than the day’s beginning.
Having extremely vivid dreams is one of mefloquine’s many known and documented side effects. I know that the mefloquine, the malaria prophylaxis I had taken the night before, had worked this side effect on me. Yet the three realities that I had experienced in such a short period of time were all as real to me as the reality that I am now experiencing. Since that day I have been half expecting to be involved in some mundane task like mowing the lawn or driving to work and suddenly wake up on another planet or deep in the jungle of Borneo or Brazil and to have a known recent history, complete with memories, waiting for me to pick it up and carry on like I did that day.
posted by Traveler at 1:17 PM
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