Sleeping Outside the Box

I’m at a basketball game, which is odd because I’m not into sports of any kind. I’m sitting out as part of the team, watching my side get humiliated. The opposition is way better and they are trying to make us look foolish and weak. I crouch down next to a teammate and express my frustration. “They’re at least 3 times better than we are. Look at the way they are attacking, they just wait with that huge guy and we can’t do anything about it. Then they play around a bit to show that we are inferior.” My teammate explains how wrong I am and tells me that we are about to win.
I don’t really follow what he’s saying. It’s sports talk and I never understood the rules well enough to follow.
There’s a very pretty girl in the crowd, next to me.
I walk out of the building and realize I’m at a University. It seems to be in some other country; the architecture is like nothing around here. The school museum has a giant circular garden in the front, raised up in a concrete cylinder. The plants in the garden are appearing and disappearing to make patterns. At one point they show a graph representing the successful implementation of a drinking fountain placed outside of the local amphitheater.
I’m fascinated by the plants existing and not existing at will and only the girl from the game breaks my concentration. She looks a little like Anne Hathaway only younger and prettier. We began walking together and she mentioned that I would get in trouble if I took her home because she was under 21. I thought that was a strange thing to say, since she was obviously over 18. I explained to her my open marriage and that it wasn’t a problem. My wife isn’t the jealous type.
She became quite strange then and started opening up all kinds of personal firewalls. She told me how her friends would hate her if she ever got involved with a married man, open or not and that she couldn’t deal with her own life. I talked her down from hysteria, explaining that her friends didn’t control her life and if she felt so insecure around them, she needed knew friends. Again she opened up more and started talking about how downloading blog themes that related to suicide was a certain equivalent to a cry for help and she had already done that. She alluded that if she were to go home and be alone, she might not be around tomorrow.
I didn’t realize she would be such a broken friend but I took her home to see my wife and brother (Silas lived with us in a large house in this world).
On the way there I tried to get the girl to use Skype. It’s wonderful, encrypted chat and phone calls, you can call me any time on it. Later in the house, I was carrying a little cup of half salt, half water. It was somehow a replacement for my phone but because of it’s lack of keys, I could only hear the other person–I couldn’t talk back…

Last night, I took a two stage release Melatonin tablet at 23:00. Melatonin, is a neural transmitter produced in the pineal gland, used by the brain to regulate sleep cycles. This particular tablet releases .25mg 30 minutes after ingestion and then dispenses the remaining .75mg 3-4 hours later. Even though I went to bed at 00:20, I didn’t fall asleep until after 03:00. Even after the initial series of tossing and turning, it seemed I didn’t sleep at all. And yet, I feel quite well rested and I remember several vivid dreams.

The Dreams

Falling from a plane is not a good time when you don’t have a parachute. This I learned with 3 other army guys who all got shot up with something and shoved in the cargo bay of a high flying helicopter. After the machine began it’s long descent, we slipped out an opening and came to consciousness just as our gear belts caught on the railing. As we screamed at one another, against the furious force of the wind, a radio began to emit the cries of a friend. A friend was telling us that we might not die. There are parachutes behind the passenger seat. We just need to climb back up into the cockpit and retrieve them. And by the way, you only have 10,000ft before you go splat.
Upon reaching the cockpit, without a moment to spare, we discover that our assailants stripped the cockpit of anything useful. No shoots. No chance. What were we to do but ride out the fall? And we did, until we landed at a peculiar angle on the freeway. Going about the pace of traffic, we slid in and started to drive with it. Even in a traffic jam though, we couldn’t shake the feeling of inertia mixed with vertigo.

I’m walking through Ballard, only it’s not Ballard but some place I’ve never been. I’m exploring since I have no way of getting home and I decide to get lunch. Our kitten, Cassiopeia, is nestled upside down in the fold of my shirt, just around my waist. She looks up at me as I walk but is not disturbed by the motions. As I round into a pizza place, I pick Cassy out of her pouch and she becomes a baby. Suddenly much heavier and clothed, I sit at a counter stool next to a fairly attractive girl who’s ordering a vegan pizza. I too order a vegan pizza, with mushrooms, olives and bell peppers. Everyone loves the baby and wants to hold it. While I’m eating, the girl next to me asks if the baby is safe with that stranger over there. The stranger in question is a makeshift midget. His legs are severed below the knee and he wears shoes to cover the stumps. He’s slowly rolling the baby toward the door every time my eyes appear not to follow him.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m watching.”
I walk over, crouched down, I extend my foot to keep the door closed, just as a patron tries to enter. That time, the door would have smacked the baby on the head. I reprimand the short man and return to the counter with the baby.

There’s quite a bit more, but I need to eat breakfast. After my shower, I half ejected a bit of morning bile. I managed to subdue it for the moment. I suspect some of my trouble sleeping last night was from dehydration. I suffered a bout of shortened breath and heat exhaustion from about 02:00-03:00. We’ll see how waking up at 06:30 works tomorrow.