WHAT IS SLEEP?

 I’m jealous of other people’s dreams. Not what they dream, but that they dream. Sleep is certainly about rest, but also the opportunity to discover what your mind does when left on its own. It fools around, makes things up, stitches things together, takes them apart and  throws the pieces up in the air.  Old friends show up in dreams, disappear with dawn. Dreams tell stories that make no sense, and stories that should be made into movies. Believe me, I know. People love to recount their dreams, which are seldom as spellbinding to the listener as to the dreamer.   

I rarely experience this dimension. Everyone dreams, so I must dream too, but when morning comes, there’s no memory, no residue left of what went on in my head when it was left on its own.

There are different ways to interpret dreams. The only one I remember is that whatever is in your dream, it’s you. If you dream about a door slamming, you are the door and the slam. If there’s a cat, you’re the cat.  You’re the bacon you dream is frying on the stove and you’re the pan, the fire, and the stove. That kind of thing. Fascinating, sort of.

During the past five years I have had two dreams I remember. But there was one unforgettable night, maybe sixty years ago, when something struck me as so significant that it woke me up. I managed to find a pencil by my bed and a scrap of paper and I wrote it down. The next morning I reached to see what wisdom I’d preserved. I’ve never forgotten it.

Sleep is a genital.