REM Sleep

           

“To sleep, perchance to dream,” Hamlet soliloquized. “Ham,” I’d like to say to him, “there isn’t any perchance when you get as old as I am.” But Ham doesn’t really care what I think. He’s got his own agenda. It’s dead-solid certain that I’m going to dream. And, unlike the dreams I used to have when I was a bit younger, these dreams are long, complex, and vivid. In fact, because I’m sleeping so lightly, my dreams seem to be directed by my half-asleep, half-awake mind. I’m able to make up plot lines and have the dreams follow those lines. I have to believe that REM sleep isn’t very restful, especially when the eyeballs keep rolling back and forth for most of the night. No wonder my eyes are so red when I awaken; they’ve been running marathons all night. I’m still having golf dreams, but they’re more realistic than they used to be. The courses now aren’t wicky wacky, with snow-covered greens and tees inside buildings, the balls aren’t misshapen things, and the play isn’t in the dark of night. Now, the holes and my shots into greens are pretty much the way they should be. I usually don’t play a complete round, but I do often play several holes in a row. And sometimes the course I’m playing is in a resort area that Rosalie and I are visiting. The other night, I was scheduled to play in a tournament but the weather was so bad it had to be called off. And in the clubhouse, I ran into an old high school classmate and his wife. I hadn’t seen him in years and years but there he was, looking just as he would look if he were about fifty. That would suggest that I too had decided to present myself as only fifty. Last night I had a dream that turned out to be nightmarish, a tendency that I hadn’t had for a long time. I was in a dark room trying to fill a double gas tank on my car and I couldn’t get the hose into the second tank and gas kept spilling out on the floor. A man came in to tell me not to worry about the spilled gas, that he would scoop it into a can for me to take with me. But then two others came in, a man and woman, smiling solicitously as they took my arms and started leading me away. I knew right then that they were either going to hold me for ransom or they were going to kill me. And then I woke up. I guess I didn’t want to pursue that story line. Now, each night when I go to bed, I wonder what story I’ll cook up in my REM time. Will it be a sensible story or one that gets away from me? I’ll just have to wait and see.