Date: Sun, 8 Sep 1996 04:57:06 -0400
Message-Id: <199609080857.EAA16331@asylum.apocalypse.org>
From: Kafka Dreams <kjc@[APOCALYPSE]>
To: void
Subject: novacaine for the soul


  Perpend.

  I do not know what happens in my mind while I sleep.

  But I dread going to sleep (though I crave it like a drug).  To
compound matters, I appear to need more sleep than most.  AND, I have
a terribly difficult time waking up.  (An infamously difficult time,
actually, and I take quite a bit of crap for it).

  I've thought for a while that maybe, MAYBE, it has to do with my
loathing of transitions.  I like old things.  I like new things.  The
turmoil of change, however, is painful to me.

  I've considered that perhaps my mind exorcises my demons while I
sleep.  Or that I might go someplace else that is not very pleasant.
Or maybe I just sleep poorly.  I've thought about supernatural causes
and brain-soup-chemical imbalances and even done a small amount of
research but found nothing conclusive.

  The truth is, for all I have published some of my nightmares, I
rarely remember my dreams.  And when I do, they more often than not
seem a harmless pastiche of images and ideas pasted together in
random, strange plots.

  But when I lay down to sleep is also when my mind is finally quiet
enough to hear the background babble of my frustrations and
irritations and pains.  That is when I catalogue the things I am
avoiding and the things I'm afraid will happen.  When I lay down to
sleep is most often when I cry.  And it is where I am alone.  

  In fact, I'm hiding from sleep even as I type, but it tears painful
yawns from me and I fear I will soon have no choice but to surrender.
(Then again, maybe that's the trouble - the surrendering to something
I have no control over).

  I do not know if I hide from the sleep or hide from the quiet, but
often I wake up feeling as dreadful as I did the night before, though
perhaps physically a bit more sound.

  How much of this mental masturbation is avoidance versus analysis?
Where is the line between the two?  

  I guess all I can really say is, "Good night."

Kelly J.