John Burridge

Lately my sleep has been spotty.  I think some of the problem is the restless cats and dog who sometimes sleep (mostly) with us, or who park in the wrong part of the bed (or on me).  For whatever reason, I'm finding that I frequently awake around 3 or 4 AM; sometimes my shoulders or other joints are sore and I need to flip over, sometimes I'm blink awake thinking about work, or stories, or music lyrics.  If I'm particularly restless, I'll move to the couch so I don't wake up Mark with all my tossing and turning.   

It feels a little unfair; supposedly, everyone is sleeping much better now that Joe Biden is in the White House -- perhaps my unconscious hasn't caught up with the political news from NPR.   The other possibility, based on the increasing frequency of daytime naps,  is that my circadian rhythm is shifting to a weird, bimodal mode between diurnal and nocturnal.  

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The other day I had a dream that I was supposed to be performing the harp along with a dream woman who is an amalgam of some Reed friends and various co-workers.  I want to say they were playing the accordion, kalimba, banjo, or other folk instrument.  

I didn't write the dream down at the time, so I've lost the detail settings other than it ended up in my old High School.   At some point, I realized that I wasn't wearing a Covid-19 mask.  Then I had set my harp down somewhere and didn't have it.   The dream progressed -- I think there was a locker room involved -- and the next thing I knew, I was standing at the school auditorium doors wrapped in a towel.  The performance had already been going for about five minutes, and the dream woman was alone on the stage, gamely plinking out the melody of some tune that I was supposed to be accompanying her with harp and voice.  If I went to retrieve my harp -- and clothing -- I'd be even more late.  I started to turn away from the door, then changed my mind and marched down the aisle, with only a towel wrapped around my middle. 

I have a sense a spotlight picked me out.  I jumped on stage and caused quite a stir.  "Hi everyone!" I said.  "You know those dreams you have where you're in public and you're suddenly naked?"  Semi-nervous laughter from the audience.  "Well, today's sort of been like that -- but at least I have a towel!"  

My sense is that the woman was kind of glad that I'd finally shown up, in a "finally" sort of way.

A bunch of six year olds ran up to the foot of the stage, and one of them said, in the breathles, excited, and bossy manner of six-year-olds explaining something that everyone should know, "You know, there's a way that you can wear a towel," and proceeded to demonstrate with her dress how to Gird Ones Loins.  

And then the dream went on to other things.

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This morning I dreamed a poem.  Unfortunately, I don't remember what the poem was about other than a vague notion that it was about politics and gender identity, possibly in the mode of an Old English epic.  Or something.  This is probably what I get for flipping through the introduction of a monograph about Sappho before turning out the light.

In another segment, I was  a caretaker at a house.  I was gathering slatted boxes, the kind you keep fruit in, to construct an outside partition or windscreen.  I'd found a whole bunch of them, and I was looking for particular boxes that were old and sun-bleached white.  I wanted to make a long straight partition with two openings  or walking through.   I had a conversation of sorts with an older couple, who might have been the owners.


In the part I remember the best, Mark and I wandered through a small town.  It might have been Northfield, downtown Eugene, or the campus district of Corvallis.