There is a time in the night when you are your most real. Sometimes I find myself caught in a place that is between sleep and wake, where I am conscious of breathing, aware of the fact that I need to turn over to give my left hip a break and where my eyes remain closed. This is when my brain has recess. I might slide into what I think of as a dream: images vivid but distorted, not recognizing who I am with but oddly sensing that I am in a dream. Suddenly I will come into what I think of as reality and begin making the dreaded night-lists. I roll through the things we need to get done, from cello work to teaching to farming. Items can be incredibly detailed and I can even remember the list in the morning light. This is also when I mentally tally bills, feel fear about the things and people I might lose and think about mortality as an unfinished job.
Morning comes and because I have to open my eyes, I’m confused about whether or not I was actually awake in the night. Much can be covered by the white noise of busyness. I still have lists. Some even make it onto scraps of papers that get tossed onto the kitchen counter, buried and found again at a later date, crumpled and dusty, like the thoughts themselves. But most of the fears and thoughts remain committed to memory. Memory that, during nighttime recess, comes out to play.
Something that is important to me is remembering that thoughts are allowed to come and go, even in twilight sleep. In the middle of the night I try to fold my lists into paper boats, set them free and watch them sail off into the sunrise. I welcome them, knowing they have purpose in my life, but remind them that they have an early boat to catch.
Our nighttime visitors have as much, perhaps even more to teach us than our daily buzzing from thing to thing. Contemplating mortality is challenging during full push in the grocery store, less so shoveling manure. Our lives have become full of electronic white noise that reduces our thoughts to soundbites. We have no open fields in our days where thoughts can graze. Thoreau wrote “Walden” because he had time for contemplation. The more time alone in the woods, the more thoughts came and sat down beside him. I often wonder if forays in the night are simply the brain’s way of taking the time it needs to process because we won’t leave room for it any other way.
While not formally labeling it a resolution, it seems important to give myself a gift of time. My mind seems to be asking for it. If I am able to see vivid, wild visions in mid night, who knows what answers I might be able to find if I take time to sit and stare into the fire.