badstar | Entries tagged with sleep

I had the most bizarre night last night.

I couldn't say how many times I fell asleep and woke up again. I can't remember the last time I tossed and turned so much. The "dream" I had...if you can call it a dream, I don't know if I ever got to sleep deep enough to really be dreaming, so maybe my half-asleep brain was just stringing a bunch of stuff together...who knows?

But anyway, there was this over-arching theme of me reading my email, and each time I clicked an unread subject line, a new segment of dream would come up. And the subject lines were basically the sort of thing I see a million of every day on Hellenic email lists. At the top were a bunch of Apollo and Dionysus-related subject lines....Dionysus, Apollo, Apollo and Dionysus, Zagreus (wow, that name hasn't come up lately in dreams), Delphi, Wine, Apollo with Wings...and then there were other random ones like Lindt Chocolate, coffee, shipping notification from Amazon. There was no spam that I remember though (okay, then, maybe it really was an actual dream!!)

So the only ones that I ever actually clicked on were the Apollo and Dionysus subject lines. And a segment of dream would start that would be like watching a documentary on TV, with a disembodied British voice talking about the history of the subject while images of temples, vases and mosaics flashed by. Occasionally this documentary voice would speak of some of my own experiences as if they were known history. (I guess they're known history to me?)

And then periodically, it would flash back to my email screen and that subject line would be marked as read...and sometimes a subject would get updated, as if I had recieved a new email on the topic (If you use gmail, you know how the threading works...that's how it looked)

So that's not so much the bizarre part.

What's bizarre is that these documentary segments were interrupted by "commercials" talking about the gods and prophetic dreams...and how they're linked...TO LINDT CHOCOLATE! (I can barely type this, I'm laughing so hard!) and especially to Lindt Cherry-Chilli bars. (I just bought one of those last night.)

Interspersed with everything else was segments of dreams of me doing normal every day stuff- getting up, making coffee, going to work, buying a newspaper, but...as this has happened before, during these segments, random words would be replaced by the name "Zagreus": "I'd like one copy of the Baltimore Zagreus, please. And this bottle of Pepsi." "Okay, that will be two dollars and thirty-Zagreus cents." Yeah, like that.

All through this, I kept waking up and falling back barely asleep. At least twice, I woke up singing the song Far Away by Chantal Kreviazuk, which is still stuck in my mind right now. Okay, this is weird, when I have a song stuck in my head, it just seems like I'm hearing it as if it were playing from some external source...except without the external source. Right now, there's an almost physical sensation of hearing the song from a specific spot in my head just above and behind my left ear.

Around 5am, I seriously considered just getting up. But I fell back to sleep. A few times. Oh gawds, what kind of day am I going to have?

This morning when I got home from work and went to bed, I somehow ended up laying on my back- all I can think of was that I had some sort of intent for meditation because I can't fall asleep on my back. But I guess I did, at least briefly, this morning. I remember becoming conscious of my field of vision being black, and then suddenly it was bright white, and then, in my mind, I was standing in a wide creek, about ankle-deep in the water. I was going to cross it. This creek twisted through land that was flat on one side, and on the other there was a stretch of flat land, and just off to one side, a very steep hill rose up from the creek bank off to my left. The hill was somewhat densely wooded with oaks and poplars, the flat land on that side was wooded off to the right, and open directly in front of me. The land behind me had occasional trees, but was mostly open. Someone else was standing in the creek, also roughly ankle-deep, nearly at the bank on the other side. I was wearing a long skirt, but had the hemline tucked up into the waistband so that it wouldn't get soaked. The sky was overcast but not very dark.

I had been there before, in the recent past. That is, I think I've had a dream like this not too long ago, at least once though at the time, I felt like I had remembered this same scene at least five or six times. In truth, I can't remember ever having a dream like this but once in a while I don't remember my dreams so maybe it was one of those.

All of a sudden, there came a giant wave down the creek- like two-story-house-high. This makes no sense, the creek was no more than knee-deep all the way across, and was too far inland to be receiving such waves from the ocean...and the wave came from upstream. At some point, I realized that the other person was no longer there.

The wave broke and crashed over me, forcing me under. I didn't have time to take a deep breath and hold it...in fact, I kept breathing. it occurred to me that I didn't seem to be getting any water in my lungs, I was breathing normally. Despite the fact that I was sure I was under about 20 feet of water, the sun was suddenly shining brilliantly through water that was clear with a slight greenish tint. The fact that my eyes were open under water did not bother them in the least bit, when it usually does. I was floating under water on my back, and rushing upwards, this must have lasted for several minutes, though it always looked like I was just below the surface, though at one point I glanced sideways and saw that the trees and hill were under water too...so I guess the area was totally flooded and I was simply rising with the water level. I was so calm and it felt so peaceful. Everything was silent. And then my sight went dark and kinda murky, and I could just barely make out images.

Keep in mind that I was conscious all this time. I could hear conversations outside my house, I could wiggle my fingers and toes. I could have moved more but I didn't want to break whatever frame of mind I was in.

A few minutes after my vision went murky, I sat up and that was that.

So I had this dream last night that I was sitting out on the corner of Guilford and Federal with a telephone and I was trying to dial someone's number, and I knew the number but each time I dialed it I hit one or two wrong digits and would have to hang up and dial again. Every now and then I would let it ring to see if it got through to whoever it was anyway (not sure who anymore, just that it was a woman that I was trying to call, someone that I know in real life too.) I was still trying to dial her number when I woke up. Don't know why I was trying to call. Just that i was. The dream took place in the evening, and it was hot out.

I also woke up with the last lines of what would have been a really amazing poem in my head. But I fell back to sleep and lost them. I remember the concept, but not the words.

Well, maybe I can try to create something from the concept.

I've decided that I'm going to dye my hair again. I can't make up my mind if I want to do it brown again, or pink- I want both! And i have both. So I'm going to do both. At the same time. Yes, folks...I'm doing the chunky-colored thing again. I loved it when it was fuschia and auburn, that was my favorite dye job ever. This should work just as well. I just don't think I'm going to be able to do it til next week since it's a rather involved process.

I was woken early...very early this morning after a dream of which I can only remember the very last fragment.

I was at the grove, in the sanctuary, we were in the middle of the Thargelia ritual and suddenly, like half the people in attendance left the circle and went back into the house. I was standing in the middle of the circle, getting ready to make an offering or something. I was slightly offended that so many people just walked away but I didn't stop the ritual or make any acknowledgment.

A few seconds later, the granite altar top cracked silently into two pieces and fell from the base. Apollo appeared in the circle in front of me, perfectly tangible and visible to everyone. I nearly dropped the pitcher of water in my hands. He told me to go on, not to worry about those that had left, or anything else. I woke up immediately after that.

This is the first time that I have had a dream of an actual visual apparition of Apollo himself.

I have decided to take this as an indication that Saturday will go well.

However...I wasn't able to go back to sleep after I woke from this one. I would doze for two or three minutes and wake up again. Which kinda sucked because I woke from the dream at like, 530.

Though, I actually feel like I had a decent night's sleep, despite only really sleeping about 5 hours.

My sister's wedding is a month and a half away. And what am I most worried about?

The tattoo thing. Well, not so worried but Trying to figure out what I'll tell people when they ask. And they will ask. Dress has a low-cut back, and my family arenot the sort of people to ignore stuff scrawled across a family member's flesh. My stepfather will comment. Loudly and frequently. He had (to take a phrase from my mom) ten French fits when he saw my first one...six months after I got it. And that's not much bigger than a silver dollar. Uncle Randy will make all kinds of comments about it being some sort of Satanic spell. Samantha will announce to the world that she wants one just like it (along with pink hair). Mumsie will demand to know what it means. And while the truth is easy, simple and makes perfect sense it will raise more questions than Ill feel like discussing that weekend. (Yeah Mom...it's a hymn to this god that i worship...)

Of course...I could always pretend I don't know what they're talking about and tell them they must be hallucinating. That could be entertaining. At least for a minute or two.

Tattoo? Tree? On my back? Isn't it a little early in the day to be hitting the bar so hard?

Oh hell, I thought of something worse. Receiving line. I have to stand in a freakin' receiving line. In a mauve dress.

I am so getting ballet flats. Chelle had better not have any grand plans to get me into dress heels. Cause...no. I will not endure physical pain. And I can't remember the last time I saw a pair of wedding-appropriate heels that I would be willing to wear. This is not a matter of aesthetics. I will only wear heeled shoes if the heels have a certain thickness. The sort of heels that I'm talking about tend not to occur on dressy shoes. (Damn. I wish I still had my red platform sandals. I wouldn't wear them for the wedding, I just really REALLY wish I still had them. Cause there's just nothing like a 6'2" Fuego.) While I have never injured myself while wearing high heels, I have a certain amount of paranoia concerning my ankles. I've sprained both of them too many times and I'd really prefer not to ever do that again. I'd rather have one run over by a car.

No, seriously. The Mustang running over my ankle hurt considerably less than any of the times I've ever sprained one.

And yesterday, I got a sketchpad and some drawing pencils (the all-graphite, no-wood, really heavy kind) and today whilst tethered to my desk, I started sketching a bit.

Methinks that butterfly wings with knives jutting out all over will be easier to draw than I previously thought. If only I could decide on the precise shape of the wings themselves. Well, I can decide...but I haven't really been able to draw them. They keep looking like crescent moons.

And last night, I found myself made the leader of the Interfaith Fairness Coalition's Gay Pride Week Interfaith Service Sub-Committee. (Yeah, you know what they say, the longer the title, the less important the job) Well, it sorta happened by default. One person has too many health problems, the other is on our little sub-committee in a specific, limited capacity.

Lucky for me, that specific, limited capacity involves him doing a large chunk of the work. And someone else has volunteered to do another large chunk of work. (It's not that I wouldn't be willing to do any of it, I just don't have the information necessary. Or free weekdays. So I get to um...think of a theme or something? I think it also involves some public speaking on my part the day of.

I've always wanted to be a figurehead. (Or not, really. I just felt like saying "figurehead".)

Looks like the weather is slowly starting to improve. All I gotta say is hell if I'm leading another ritual through gale-force winds a la Samhain or torrential downpours much like Midsummer.

I'm difficult like that.

Uhg. It's 10? I need to charge my ipod. I should go to sleep a bit earlier than I have the last 2 nights. Hopefully I'll sleep a full night.

Speaking of next week, I still have to write stuff. Invocations. Seasonal lore. Meditation. And the last couple of pieces of my blasted DP. I've got my dedicant's oath somewhat figured out. I keep forgetting that I have my book reviews mostly-written. I just have to get them off of the cd they're on.