My daughter almost killed me in my sleep (‘night terror’)

 My daughter almost killed me in my sleep the other day.

However I may never know how close I actually was. At the time though, it felt like I was a goner.

If you ever had what’s referred to as a “night terror”, it was a similar experience, and I’ve only ever had one. It’s a feeling of being in an unconscious state between dreaming and waking, where you are perfectly aware of what’s going on around you, and you want to wake up or do something, but you can’t, and you keep thinking about it, but you still can’t. The one previous time it did happen to me I was sleeping in the back of a van while on a road trip, I could hear all my buddies yakking and I wanted to get up, but I COULD NOT.  

Parasomnia, as it's otherwise known, is a cousin of sleepwalking, and for some reason, the authors here don't recommend waking up someone in this or that state.  (Why the hell not?)

The setting: Lazy weekend afternoon, watching retro cartoons on YouTube with my young daughter who came into the room after I had just started dozing off.

I was sleeping on my left side, facing the wall, under a big down comforter and the phone was not far from my arm with all the retro cartoons playing quietly. (Laser blast sounds and robots hurling threats at each other.)

She thought it would be comfortable, I guess, to rest her head and chin in the valley across my neck for ideal viewing, and I can’t be sure for how long she was there.

I suppose I was happy she had visited but I became aware that something was very wrong as well. I could feel the pressure on my neck and in that dreamlike state where you don’t really know what is what, I thought that I needed to take conscious action to tell her to move or just to move myself. And with each passing moment I felt like my ability to communicate, to return through the tunnel to the world of the awake was slipping.

Could I just utter the word “Stop!” or “Move!” or “Help!” And that weight became heavier and heavier and I wasn't sure if I’d ever make it out. In fact, I am not sure if this was a real emergency, or I was just dreaming that it was, but I assure you that at the time I couldn't tell the difference.  I did some reading up on asphyxia and the arteries in the sides of the neck, and the pillow side had a support hump in it, and of course her weight was adding pressure to both sides.  

After a few long, terrifyingly helpless moments of this, I just thought, “Let go, there’s nothing that can be done.”

Then I immediately woke up and said, "No." She got off.  And I lived to see another day.

Photo purge

Click to embiggen

Source: unknown.  I love the imagery of the seasons that this photo represents.

Precisely.

A favorite hideaway of mine with a long horizontal window, so inviting, opening to a very minimalist interior, and creative backlighting - felt kind of adobe, a crossroads, an invitation to a life-changing conversation, or something to be revealed.

Pizza: Nature's superfood.

Commitment

This photograph documents the sad end to my golf shoes.  I had these shoes tucked away in my golf bag, a pair of freebies I never realized came with a great set of clubs I bought from a friend.  When I made my discovery early this summer, I was proud: no longer would I have to be seen around the country club wearing a pair of New Balance cross-trainers.  I was finally part of society. 

They'd been sitting for years inside a zippered pocket on the golf bag, a kind of void space forming the structure of the bag in which you'd never think to look.  The last recesses of original hull construction they look on a ship before calling off a man overboard search.  So, for years these shoes sat in the garage, from Maryland to San Diego, from San Diego to Mudville, waiting for someone to need them.  When I found them, I was delighted to give them new life.  I lovingly polished them with a bit of white polish, covering the scuff marks, going around and around the toes with that perfect measure of pressure, and treating them as well as I did my favorite dress shoes.  "Wow, Nikes.  Probably at one time $150."  I thought of the story of the The Velveteen Rabbit, or How Toys Become Real, by Marjorie Williams.  So many allegories... 

They'd seen the course once or twice before with their previous owner, maybe they were a bit neglected.  After a game or two, I noticed the sole on the right shoe was coming loose.  "Nothing I couldn't patch up back at home with a good gob of fabric glue," I muttered. 

Good as new.  They went around another game or two, enjoying their newfound life and covering a lot of ground.  But the years in the heat had taken their toll on them, as I found on hole number three at the Metro Golf Course on a soggy early afternoon, the swankiest place in town (one of Mudville's neighbors where you're actually expected to wear a belt and tuck in your shirt).  "Bernie, these shoes are falling apart, I might have to call it quits early."  Every step I took, the top of the right sole would smack up to the bottom of the stitching (or whatever that correlates to in the anatomy of a shoe) making a loud "CLOP CLOP" report.  "Keep playing, when it falls off you can go home."  So every step walking to my ball from the cart path was "CLOP ped CLOP ped CLOP ped CLOP ped."  Boy, it was soggy out there.  Then, the bottom of the left sole did the same, so it was, "CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP."  No reactions from anyone, oh well, keep playing. 

When the right sole was almost done, I showed it to Bernie again, who helped me by taking a firm grip on it and ripping it off.  My shoe didn't seem in any pain.  So I played like that for a little while, and then the left sole - just fell off on its own.  Now I was just playing with the leather and cloth and stitches on the bottom of each shoe, kind of in the manner of construction of rock-climbing shoes.  I was happy because I could now run to the ball without worry, it was kind of "combat golf" that day: I would make a crappy shot and then run to the ball to keep a good pace with the more experienced guys.  A good workout nonetheless; we weren't allowed to drive onto the fairways because of the rain so I logged a good couple hundred yards of jog/sprints that day. 

Without warning, on the right foot, I could see my toes sticking out, but I stuck with it (them?).  We were nearing the end of the last hole, and this was no time to throw in the towel. Finally, I ended up taking off the right shoe, and playing with only one shoe and a sock.  Then in my socks.  But I didn't give up, and my shoes didn't give up on me.  A little apprehensive about disapproving snorts from anyone who might see us in this state, I still felt good about not quitting.  Nonetheless barefoot , I realized that maybe there should be more dignity involved.  "Come on shoes, this place isn't good enough for us.  I'm taking you home."

Half-asleep

   Listening to my doggie breathing, I wonder if life is just a spark.  A journal, my only hope being that we all learn something about ourselves.

'The Planet and the Radio Dish'

This photo, by Alex Cherney, can be seen here: (link). 

Hopefully, you're familiar with The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Having read this as a youngster, and without cheating, I recall the reader encountering an aviator stranded in the desert.  (Inspired by stories of the French Foreign Legion?) Eventually, a curious man who travelled around on a tiny planet and the desert wanderer revealed their "strange" perspectives to one another, and a great parable within. 

That the Little Prince could circle his lonely, small planet in a few hops, the book's essence was dreamlike and ethereal.  I now long to revisit the message in the book (without looking it up in two clicks).

Cagey's listening to

You'll never know the vigil I keep

When you sleep
You never know the vigil I keep


Watch you sleep
You'll never know the vigil I keep

(With apologies to The Church)

Cagey's listening to

Dated video, but sonically spurs the imagination.  Those Coast-to-Coast producers really have access to a huge repertoire of cosmic synth and other wild songs.

About that dream last night...

Haven't written up a dream here before, but I storyboarded one out a long time ago detailing a strange escape from an unmentionable place in D.C.'s quarternary sector... Anyway, hopefully you're groggy and thinking about sleeping already - good.

I'm in Europe (France?) in the middle of a small city which happens to be near a military academy. A fountain gushes while people and birds mill about in a quaint plaza. I see lots of cadets walking out in various uniforms, it looks like class just got out. Through the procession and sea of uniforms, I see more and more in blue, digital cammies, with blue hair and berets. Weird. Then I see an older one walk by with some rank insignia on his hat, and I said to my friend in English, "Hey, I have some of those." Then, I'm in a room.

I look up at the rafters, I look down at the knotholes in the wooden floor. I'm the size of a mouse - I am a mouse, and I stand under a sign and ledge that says something about "standing here to grow." This place is a rickety but warm building that allows you to see for quite a long distance until finally the obscurity of the low-light lets me only see blackness where the far wall should be.

Then I am the size of and I am a very young boy and I go up from near the side of the room via a very narrow enclosed staircase that rises a few floors. Soft, warm tones, browns and oranges (70s?!) and I could keep turning corners and going up, but as I'm about to turn, I see a small door about the size of a kitchen pantry door and pull it open. I pull myself up and squeeze in and I find myself in a very large bedroom. The floor is made out of cushions or soft plates, or is just very soft. The same browns and oranges are here, and some soft lighting from a lamp in a corner. There are larger-sized illustrated children's books scattered around There's been a person with me, a guide or even a narrator, and there's a young boy about my age in the room - this is his room - but I don't interact with him.

The "narrator" and I near the wall where I look behind a painting, and behind this painting, I open a very small door within a door within a door, several descending in size and assuming funny shapes, like things I'd have cut out in construction paper. Some have combination tumbler locks drawn on in scribbly pencil as if by the child. As I open each successive door, I can feel my curiosity rise for what I'll find, but not a yearning or excitement, I'm just going through motions. After opening seven doors, I can't believe what I've found: a large and tacky postcard glued to the inside of the door with a pop-up paper burlesque girl. You pull the tab and the leg kicks up like some kind of show. My awake reaction is still, "What for?"

Something is very obviously missing, or is it? There's nothing in the safe, shouldn't there be something in the safe?

The narrator tells me something about how the level of "hiddenness" of this room is highly approved of by _____, presumably the child (whose name I don't remember). The child is oblivious to our visit, which means we're either welcome or he doesn't see us. At any rate, this room feels like sanctuary. Good to know I can find my way back to this place if I need.

I'd like to find an interpretation of this dream, or it stands out to me so much that I figured I should journal about it, having skipped out on my last dream.

Like a moth to a flame

Insomniac here with another big question mark.

I'm noticing most nights, and nights only, when I go to the perch on the front porch, classical music plays - LOUD - from somewhere I can't discern.

5 Ws and 1H: It is just a bizarre phenomenon when you go outside expecting solitude and the notes carry to where you stand. I feel like I'm in a Hans Christian Andersen tale or something.

Sylvian & Sakamoto - Forbidden Colours

Transmissions of many forms connect, educate us

I love radio as a medium. I love fishing for interesting things on the airwaves, fishing for signals far and near. I always thought the nationally broadcast Coast to Coast was middle-of-the-night E.T./conspiracist tuning (but I don't have an issue with that). Although I'm not an enthusiast, when I have tuned in, I've occasionally enjoyed guests reasoning with wisdom and discernment on human behavior - not just fluff or whipped topping - and resonating with truth. "Peeling back the onion" is a clever way to describe this. Using one's own intuition, I believe it's important to "hit record" and hold onto these words and hear them again. Like horoscopes, you start out with a message with broad general appeal ("You are good." "You be careful." etc.) and deduce its personal meaning to your station in life, its worth to you in the way you carry on.

Case in point today: Dr. Les Carter. I liked this clinician's way of analyzing aspects of anger and fear, both some of the most powerful of human emotions, and an important charge at the end.

On conflict and respect: "Anger creates more disrespect: you don't end up getting what you want for expressing your anger, you [risk] an opportunity of what you want for more disrespect, which keeps anger alive... [and you have a] whole cycle going of unhealthy anger."

"Suppose you're in a relationship, and somebody displays some disrespect for you, there are healthy ways you can respond to that. Anger can work on your behalf. Example: You can stand up for what you believe is right in that, but you can do it in such a way that shows dignity and the worth toward that other individual, as you stand your ground and treat that other individual with genuine goodness, there's the good chance that that the other’s vision is going to diminish some of the things coming your way, and you don't perpetuate ugly behavior."

"Is there a measurable physiological response when you get angry?"

On fear: "What’s the emotion that drives pretenses? It’s very easy. Fear! The person who lives with pretenses is thinking, 'Well I’m threatened by the possibility of being seen threatened, of being seen as something other than wonderful. So, I’ve gotta keep up these false fronts because it’d be awful of people made a wrong interpretation of me.' The link to anger saw something else. Certainly the individual that drops the fear and learns to have a certain inner trust you know, it’s o.k.: To be what I am. Sometimes you’ll find that - 'I’m a mixed bag.' Sometimes I make wise decisions, sometimes I don’t. Drop the pretenses and learn to live without the fear. That’s where emotional cleanness starts to occur."

"There's nothing wrong with thinking, 'I’m a good guy who tries to go to work and help people.'"

"If you have a certain giftedness, I believe it’s wrong to hold that back. To not live in a forward way without using that gift in a forward way is not making good use of the life that’s been given you."

"Clara talked about pretenses – trying to pretend much more than you really are – you don’t have flaws, weaknesses or fears. There are lots of things you can do with a nice, moderate level of self-identity, not saying 'My underarms don’t stink, etc.'" :)

"Admit and acknowledge when you don’t have good moments!"

Quote of the day: On unruly children in public

From a forum post about an unruly child who was slapped in Wal-Mart by an unrelated adult, by "Worldwalker." I really love the last paragraph.

"Speaking of kids crying really loud, no, you do not have a right to allow your kid to scream in a store, a restaurant, a movie theater, or anywhere else where civilized behavior is expected. You have no more right to do so than I have to play the bagpipes there. Of course a 2-year-old isn't mature enough to be responsible for his own behavior ... which is why it's your job to see that he doesn't do uncivilized things. That goes with this whole "parent" thing. Having a child is a major responsibility, and part of that is accepting that taking proper care of that child is going to require some changes in your lifestyle. You can't go on as if nothing has changed and demand that other people endure the consequences."

"If you've got a child who's too young to behave in public places, then don't take him into those places until he's old enough. Leave him with Grandma for the afternoon. Get a babysitter. Shop online. Get the movie from Netflix, with the added bonus that you can watch it without being distracted by the heavy breathing three rows back. Get take-out."

"Your right to swing your fist in the air stops where my nose starts. Your right to let you child do whatever it wants stops where other people's rights -- what's called "quiet enjoyment" start. It's like we're starting into a social tragedy of the commons, where people take a little bit more, and a little bit more, until eventually have a world with all the charm, pleasantness, and civility of a cage full of poo-flinging monkeys."

Are you a just a leaf in a stream?

I enjoyed this discourse between radio host Dr. Michael Savage and a caller - "John" from New York City. In this transcript, Dr. Savage used a simple but beautiful analogy on free will and religion, and the sense of a powerful communication being made was very clear. Beyond the caller, I wonder how many listeners pondered the exchange.


Hr. 3 22:03, 27 July 09

Caller John: “My personal belief is however the universe works, whatever happens to us is just that, whatever happens - happens irrespective of whatever belief system we believe in.”

Dr. Michael Savage: “So you think you are just a leaf in a stream going downstream and there's nothing you can do as a leaf.”

J: “I'm sorry?”

S: “You believe you are like a leaf and thrown into a stream and you are just moving along and you have no effect upon the stream itself.”

J: “I have an effect on this world if I choose to but not...”

S: “You’re saying you have no free identity and no free association? You can't make your life become what it should be? You can't alter situations and affect the outcome of your life?”

J: “I certainly can, but not after death... as I said, however the…”

S: “Wait wait wait I wanna I want to back up on this, because many people think they're just leaves in a stream, and they have no effect on their destiny.

J: “Just because you believe in Christianity, it's up to the universe...”

S: “Do you believe your acts while you're living will have any impact on what happens afterwards?”

J: “I don't know, but I will tell you I definitely try to do the right thing in life just in case.”

S: (Laughing) “There’re many reasons to do the right thing, some of them are based on selfish motives such as... [unknown] Just in case I happen to subscribe to that as well... I want to gamble that there is a judgment day, not necessarily because I'm such a good person!”

I have put off this trip for a long time. This is what far away is, I've come by train and I've arrived at the limits of wherever it is I know... Have only been here a few times after considerable effort to arrange to get out of town. There's a place I want to see - don't get me wrong: this small town on the line is a place I like and I've wanted to walk in again for a long time - to see people - artisans, a town brewer, little round streets. However, there's somewhere else I'd really like to see if I press on a few hours. Haven't I been there before?

One more for my karaoke repertoire

Overkill - Men at Work - 1983

Especially at night...

Untitled

Untitled

"Grand Surprise" and "Hooray for Me I, II, and III"

I remember this prof from Anthropology class telling us often, "Make sure you get that down." Such a statement is fine every once in awhile, but overused, begins to lose its meaning. (In fact, he began to seem way overenthusiastic about his stand-up bit.) This, especially when discussing rocks at 8:30 a.m. in the morning after morning calisthenics.