Turn Off Your Mind, Relax And Float Downstream

 The most difficult thing about waking from a dream is the part where you try and piece together the bits that seemed so important while they were taking place inside your head. Moments before, while your eyes were closed, all of those events and connections seemed so revelatory. Upon waking, and attempting to unravel the details of a night's adventure seems so tedious and unnecessary when just a short time ago you had it all figured out.

Many is the time that I have congratulated myself, while asleep, for arriving at a solution to a problem that seemed insurmountable in the wide awake world. Then, as the morning sun comes creeping in the window and into my eyes, those ideas shrivel and blow away. I am left with just a sinking feeling that I must have left out one of the finer points that would have made all that time working with robot monkeys worthwhile. 

Or perhaps the stakes of life are very different behind the wall of sleep. I cannot tell you how many times I have been in firm in my belief that I have solved the problem of human-powered flight when I am still a-snooze. It's simple enough, usually just a matter of concentration and being careful with your arm position. A lot of people seem to think that it involves a lot of flapping, but all the research I have done suggests that relaxation is the key. Or at least that's what seems to work best for me. When I am asleep. I have also discovered that if you pedal a bicycle just so, eventually it will rise into the air and carry you to all manner of times and places. In both cases, the landing is the part that goes unchecked. I suppose that if what got me up there in the first place was relaxing and taking it slowly, it makes sense to project that being uptight and flapping or pedaling furiously would bring you back to earth rather abruptly. 

Which is where I tend to find myself all too quickly. Usually in my bed, face in my pillow, cursing myself for not having the necessary cleverness to bring those skills with me to the other side. I suppose I should be grateful for the soft landing. Which is also true of those dream confrontations with people who are older, smarter or just plain better in your dreams. Somehow the right words magically appear on the tip of my tongue, and the timing could not be better, and the audience more appreciative of my wit and elocution. Make a mental note to remember that speech the next time I speak to -

- who was that again?

And even if I remember who it was I needed to say all those wise and meaningful things to, they have become mixed up in the stream of consciousness that will take me to the bathroom and then the kitchen and the start of my day without a place to reclaim my scattered wits. Wandering through the balance of the day, until it is time to crawl back in bed, close my eyes and take flight.