...Thinking I Have Sleep Apnea, Which Would Explain Some of My Dreams and Anxious Sleeplessness
Posted by Steven Wingate at 3/17/2008 10:26 PM and is filed under Dreams,Newark Airport,Afterlife,sleep Apnea,Unwritten Poetry Books 
Jenny always said I had it, and after tonight I’m starting to believe her. Although maybe I don’t have sleep apnea at all, and am writing this at 3:57 a.m. because Landon, sleeping on the big bed because he has yet another ear infection, spent a full hour head-butting me in the back approximately every three minutes. I have felt a few little gaps in my breathing over the years, usually after I’ve quaffed one sip too many of my favorite beers such as Pacifico, New Belgium’s 1554 Black Ale Stella Artois, or Stone’s Arrogant Bastard.
“Why the commercial references, Steve?” I can hear you asking. “Selling out on us before you really have anything to sell? How gross and tacky.” But give me a break. Maybe by mentioning real products in this blog, I’ll get some magical product placement honorarium that can help defray the expensive surgery I no doubt have to endure because of my sleep apnea.
I’m pretty convinced now that I have it, even though it’s quite situational, because I had two dreams tonight about dying and/or being reborn; this makes sense if your body skips a breath or two and you wake up in a panic, wondering whether you had a dream about dying/being reborn because your breath actually stopped for awhile, and you died and were reborn.
Such things happen in dreams, and you're a liar if you say they've never happened to you.
Anyway, the dreams were weird. In one, I had just died and arrived in an afterlife that reminded me of Newark Airport, except that it took less than an hour and a frickin’ half to get out of there by taxi. (Honk if you know what I’m talking about, people! Bang your desk in frustration!) But I didn’t need a cab because my mom picked me up—a 40-ish version of my mom, the way I remember her best. I popped into her big ol’ late 60s American station wagon and she greeted me like she was picking me up from school. She then started pointing out old hangouts of my father’s, where I could theoretically find him.
But I couldn’t see my dad, who according to my mother was at several bars at once. Apparently in the afterlife, all times and places exist simultaneously; but your mother’s rules about where you can go and when still apply, which meant that I couldn't go into bars to look for my father even though I could drink enough to earn a seat beside him.
The more exiting dream happened twice, sandwiched around the one with my mom. In this one, I vexed and annoyed my family (my dream-family, not my real one) by waking up at night and running down to the TV room to start writing a book of poetry called _________________ that I absolutely had to write, and right now. My new life and identity depended 100% on me dedicating myself to this book of poetry above all else. Apparently I had died in some fishing accident, then been reborn—which led to me waking up in the morning and running down to the TV room to start writing this book of poetry with the fabulous, earth-shattering name I can’t remember to save my life.
My dream-father, who had a lot of money if the ultra-cool lamp and white chair I worked under were any indication, tried to talk sense into me. He asked me my name, and I told him, and he said that wasn’t my name at all. He said that I was a completely different person than I was pretending to be, and that he and everyone else in the family wanted me to seek counseling because I hadn't died in the rive at all, and I hadn't been reborn. I simply woke up in the middle of every night, loudly stumbled down to the TV room, turned on the TV with the sound off, sat in the white chair, and tried to write _________________ .
But I never wrote a line of it, and that drove everybody crazy. This person I claimed to be, who had died in the fishing accident and come back to life, and now had to write his poems—this person whose name I gave to my dream-father every night, supplemented by details ranging from his junior high school friends to things he had on his bookshelves—had never existed in any earthly realm. Fearing some kind of demonic possession, my family had hired investigators and genealogists (why genealogists?) to track this person down, but no trace of him turned up.
Please, they said to me. Get help. Get us all help.
Other weird things happened in this dream that I can’t fully recall, and can’t place sequentially either before or after the Afterlife = Newark Airport Dream. I got married to a woman twenty years my elder who looked like a more exotic and dark-skinned version of the hotel magnate Leona Helmsley; I got involved in a nasty hockey fight in the hallway to my team’s locker room that involved several broken bottles and the casual, curious drinking of blood; I unsuccessfully tried to stop a guy from trying to put out a fire (one I think may have started) by rolling him in a pile of snow, which somehow caused his death; a military tribunal convened and beheaded somebody with a sword.
So I stumbled in the dark down to the white chair and urgently tried to write the book of poetry called _________________. Even though I never did anything more than stare at the blank lines on my legal pad.
What does it mean? Nothing or everything. The detritus of my day or the key to the puzzle of my soul. Maybe both simultaneously. But who has the time to dig inside the self like that, and are we even meant to? Are we better off letting the dreams live inside us and pushing us from one pole of being to the other?
I don't know. But one thing I do know:
If I ever find out the name of the book of poetry that my dream-self was supposed to write—then watch out, world., because it will change everything. So honest in its beauty, so savage in its order, that the rest of the world will not be able to stand still.
“Why the commercial references, Steve?” I can hear you asking. “Selling out on us before you really have anything to sell? How gross and tacky.” But give me a break. Maybe by mentioning real products in this blog, I’ll get some magical product placement honorarium that can help defray the expensive surgery I no doubt have to endure because of my sleep apnea.
I’m pretty convinced now that I have it, even though it’s quite situational, because I had two dreams tonight about dying and/or being reborn; this makes sense if your body skips a breath or two and you wake up in a panic, wondering whether you had a dream about dying/being reborn because your breath actually stopped for awhile, and you died and were reborn.
Such things happen in dreams, and you're a liar if you say they've never happened to you.
Anyway, the dreams were weird. In one, I had just died and arrived in an afterlife that reminded me of Newark Airport, except that it took less than an hour and a frickin’ half to get out of there by taxi. (Honk if you know what I’m talking about, people! Bang your desk in frustration!) But I didn’t need a cab because my mom picked me up—a 40-ish version of my mom, the way I remember her best. I popped into her big ol’ late 60s American station wagon and she greeted me like she was picking me up from school. She then started pointing out old hangouts of my father’s, where I could theoretically find him.
But I couldn’t see my dad, who according to my mother was at several bars at once. Apparently in the afterlife, all times and places exist simultaneously; but your mother’s rules about where you can go and when still apply, which meant that I couldn't go into bars to look for my father even though I could drink enough to earn a seat beside him.
The more exiting dream happened twice, sandwiched around the one with my mom. In this one, I vexed and annoyed my family (my dream-family, not my real one) by waking up at night and running down to the TV room to start writing a book of poetry called _________________ that I absolutely had to write, and right now. My new life and identity depended 100% on me dedicating myself to this book of poetry above all else. Apparently I had died in some fishing accident, then been reborn—which led to me waking up in the morning and running down to the TV room to start writing this book of poetry with the fabulous, earth-shattering name I can’t remember to save my life.
My dream-father, who had a lot of money if the ultra-cool lamp and white chair I worked under were any indication, tried to talk sense into me. He asked me my name, and I told him, and he said that wasn’t my name at all. He said that I was a completely different person than I was pretending to be, and that he and everyone else in the family wanted me to seek counseling because I hadn't died in the rive at all, and I hadn't been reborn. I simply woke up in the middle of every night, loudly stumbled down to the TV room, turned on the TV with the sound off, sat in the white chair, and tried to write _________________ .
But I never wrote a line of it, and that drove everybody crazy. This person I claimed to be, who had died in the fishing accident and come back to life, and now had to write his poems—this person whose name I gave to my dream-father every night, supplemented by details ranging from his junior high school friends to things he had on his bookshelves—had never existed in any earthly realm. Fearing some kind of demonic possession, my family had hired investigators and genealogists (why genealogists?) to track this person down, but no trace of him turned up.
Please, they said to me. Get help. Get us all help.
Other weird things happened in this dream that I can’t fully recall, and can’t place sequentially either before or after the Afterlife = Newark Airport Dream. I got married to a woman twenty years my elder who looked like a more exotic and dark-skinned version of the hotel magnate Leona Helmsley; I got involved in a nasty hockey fight in the hallway to my team’s locker room that involved several broken bottles and the casual, curious drinking of blood; I unsuccessfully tried to stop a guy from trying to put out a fire (one I think may have started) by rolling him in a pile of snow, which somehow caused his death; a military tribunal convened and beheaded somebody with a sword.
So I stumbled in the dark down to the white chair and urgently tried to write the book of poetry called _________________. Even though I never did anything more than stare at the blank lines on my legal pad.
What does it mean? Nothing or everything. The detritus of my day or the key to the puzzle of my soul. Maybe both simultaneously. But who has the time to dig inside the self like that, and are we even meant to? Are we better off letting the dreams live inside us and pushing us from one pole of being to the other?
I don't know. But one thing I do know:
If I ever find out the name of the book of poetry that my dream-self was supposed to write—then watch out, world., because it will change everything. So honest in its beauty, so savage in its order, that the rest of the world will not be able to stand still.
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