Zzzzzz. Is there anything better than sleep?
Just before sleep and just after sleep are my two favorite times of the day.
The name for the lovely period right before we nod off is not very dreamy.
Hypnagogia.
It's the transition from being awake to being asleep. Coming out of sleep has a graceless name too.
Hypnopompia.
I dated a girl in high school named Gladys Hynopompia. As you can imagine, she was teased a lot.
I heard that she married a man named Brown, and her disposition improved immeasurably.
Before I rhapsodize about sleep, I want to express my condolences to anyone who can't sleep, and to anyone who falls asleep when they wish they didn't.
Insomnia is no good for you.
Narcolepsy is no good for you either. Remember the Dormouse in "Alice"?
Sleep comes upon me easily, and I look forward to it.
When I was in college, I could sleep for 12 hours, wake, brush my teeth, and go back to it.
Now I sleep for a few hours at a time, accomplish as much as I can, nap, and repeat.
I am following Edison's example. It's called "polyphasic sleeping."
I don't know who came up with names for sleeping and sleeping disorders, but there is no poetry in them, is there?
When I am about to fall asleep, I purposely reminisce, and I schedule my recollections.
On Mondays, I reminisce about my father.
On Tuesdays, I reminisce about Little League.
On Wednesdays, it's ex-girlfriends.
I try to avoid bad times and disagreeable people, because I know that my nightmares will take care of that.
I sleep like the innocent, which I am not. But I am visited.
A "nightmare" is, I am sorry to say, "a female evil spirit thought to lie upon and suffocate sleepers."
Mine knocks on my door just about every other night.
I don't know where some of the things I dream about are stored. They get all turned around, but they seem quite real.
I wish it were more like Netflix, and that I could order up a romantic comedy.
Waking is slow, and it usually takes coffee.
But, still in bed, with the dachshund at my side, everything is rosy, as if I have shaken the Etch-a-Sketch, and I get to start all over.
That's because I haven't turned on the computer. That's because I haven't read the newspaper.
Ignorance is bliss for five or 10 minutes. I have plenty of comfort and joy, food, and few financial worries.
My love life is just fine.
Then, gradually, the realities of existence begin to enter, and another day takes a familiar shape.
"The (Olympics) stadium was surrounded by hundreds of soldiers with assault rifles."
There have been times when I couldn't get to sleep because of ailments, problems at school, my father and mother's declines, a busted friendship, things like that.
Not now. I don't go to the trundle with a heavy heart, except for the world, and for the United States. It's not pretty out there.
It's good in here, next to my studio, near a music or two, aside a dachshund, and, now and then, a vertical German (Jennifer).
Sweet dreams.
Craig Marshall Smith is an artist, educator and Highlands Ranch resident. He can be reached at craigmarshallsmith@comcast.net.
from Lakewood Sentinel - Latest Stories http://lakewoodsentinel.com/stories/Zzzzz-its-worth-repeating,233757
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