Dreaming Reality

Ah, yes.  The night time musings of a narcoleptic.
Probably wise to take with a good dose of salt...salt, not sugar because sugar almost always tips this girl into sleep before she can finish that last piece of dairy milk.  Must...finish...last...piece...*zzzz*

And maybe, just maybe this is my best work...these thoughts...the stuff on the edge of sleep...this might really be the smartest stuff I've ever tried to concoct. But I'm not sure I'm the best gauge of brilliance when my head's nodding and bobbing towards any surface willing to bed me down.

Sleep.  Weird stuff.  But absolutely vital.  It's also something that I imagine is not given a lot of thought, unless there is a problem with the mechanics of actually doing it.
Being someone who has plenty of the stuff - in fact, really more than I need - I have had to adapt to the idea that sleep can take place anywhere, anytime.  Before I became this person, I took for granted that sleep was predominantly a night time activity done in the privacy of your own home, in the privacy of your own bed.  Other than your parents, who may have watched you fall asleep as a wee cute kiddie (totally cool and normal) or a very intense love interest who you would wake up to staring into your eyes *I just love watching you sleeeeeeep* (totally weird and stalker-ish)  Ewww.  Come on, that's not just me thinking weird is it.  That's some weird stuff right there.
Point being, other than the exceptions...the rule is that you get to do your sleep thing in private.

So when sleep approaches like a freight train and crashes into you standing in line in the supermarket, or mid-conversation with friend who is finally opening up about that really personal and serious thing that they have mustered up the courage to share with you, or eating Christmas dinner...every year.  If sleep jumps on you during the day, during normal opening hours, the thing is, YOU are the only one asleep.  You have temporarily stepped out of conscious-land.  However, as noted, everyone else has not joined you for an 11.32am siesta on the St Clair bus into town.  Although that would be cool.  I would make sure I caught that bus everyday.  But no, it's just you...the lone sleeper...asleep at the wrong time and in the wrong place...and what is a very private act for almost everyone else, becomes a public spectacle.

Being asleep in public renders you completely vulnerable in a lot of ways.  You have to give up on the idea of what you might look like as you twitch and flex and relax your way into sleep.  You have to accept the fact that you miss out on conversation, the final episode of a favourite TV show, saying goodbye to people who might leave, the scenery between Balclutha and Papatowai...and you have to surrender your control over situations you can't guarantee you will be completely present for.
But it does mean I get to dream during waking hours.  How amazing is that???!!  As I slip in and out of sleep, the conversations which go on around me are woven into my dreams and that line between sleep and not sleep is very firmly blurred.

I don't trust my memory anymore because half the time I dreamed it up.  This can be frustrating.  But it also adds a whole layer of richness to my life - where my imagination and my reality become very much entangled - and well, I don't always think that's a bad thing!  It enables me to continue to look at the world with wonder and surprise and marvel at things.  It teaches me that there is much MORE to life than just the tangible - what you can see, know, hold in your hand.  There are layers to our understanding of what reality is, and life is all the greater for being able to see things in this way.
I ramble.  I rave.  I really need to sleep.
Narcoleptic saying over and out.