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I realize now I had walked in my sleep towards the door.

Submitted entry: As I was typing the date I realized that it would havebeen my mom’s 52nd birthday today were she still alive. Well, it still is the 52ndanniversary of her birth and all just that she’s not around to celebrate. It’s odd toimagine. Further odd that if I am going to live as long as she did I’m more than half waythrough my life.

Yesterday I finished the firstmilestone of my current project - a 180+ page document (not all text, or course). I finishedat just about dusk last night and by the time I came back from emailing it my brain was mush.I don’t know what happened as I wasn’t working any harder than I ever did before. But Idefinitely finished up with a brain cramp.

When I got back Paul had just awakened from a reallylate nap and had already left to hang out with his granny. I heard them as I left the house,in fact, playing away. So when I got home I read some and spent a bit of time working on Elixir Farm with Sage. Well, as best as I could with abrain cramp. Mostly it was a silly time where I just made silly responses to her questionswhile she laughed at them.

When Paul got back things went pretty well for a whilewhile we hung out watching some AVI files of old Sesame Street segments (the animated”commercials” for letters and numbers) reading and having dinner. As it got later, though,things degenerated and he started hitting Sage trying to get a reaction. Several times wespoke to him “We don’t hit in this family” and the like, he eventually tired andnursed to sleep. Sage fell asleep nursing too and so I took a few minutes to catch up on myemail.

A few minutes later Sage woke up screaming “Letgo!” over and over again. I realized then that Paul had done something he only does whenhe’s really tired. He bit Sage’s nipple - and held on with a deathgrip. Finally I think shejust pulled it out and whimpered a bit. Then as I was comforting her she said “He’s sucha jerk.” The name calling really upset me (I didn’t realize she was half asleepand not really aware of what she was talking about). Anyway - I talked to her some about howI felt that it wasn’t okay to say that sort of thing and it degenerated into a “Whosefault is it that Paul is hitting” argument. It went on for a little while until wecomposed ourselves - we were both exhausted nutcases and so we weren’t the most productivearguers there were. Usually one of us can quickly nip a situation in the bud by having thepresence of mind to remain calm and maintain equanimity. However, after maybe ten minutes wetalked about when he’s hitting and narrowed it down to when it’s just the three of us - henever hits when it’s just us alone. And we realized from that that he was probably feelingleft out. We’ve never been very great at spending time as a threesome - usually it’s one ofus working, reading, cooking, doing chores or having other private time while the other hangsout with him. And admittedly we spend a lot of time as a threesome talking to each otherwhich I’m sure feels really crummy. So we resolved last night that we would change how we arewith him as a threesome and that today would also be a work-free family day. As in neither ofus works on the computer when he’s awake or around (right now he’s off with his granny). Sofar it’s worked swimmingly and the dynamic has been really different. He’s seemed morecheerful, calm and absolutely better behaved. Why didn’t we figure this out before? And ofcourse there’s the guilt that we didn’t do it sooner

Had a funny thing happen a couple of nights ago. Oneof the side effects of me staying up really late is that I can wake up, seem totally awakewhile speaking utter nonsense. One time in Bethlehem, I’m told (I have vague memories ofthis) that I came home from a 18 hour work day (I told you I was crazy in thosedays) and woke up at like 8:00 AM (like three hours after going to sleep) and told Sage aboutan experiment that Kitey (who was visiting at the time) and a friend of hers (alsovisiting) were performing on the porch. Sage was just tired enough to believe it a little andso we had a very confusing time as I crabbily explained to her about what they were doing intheir experiment.

Anyway - at one point in the night Sage (who wassleeping on the couch - Paul wants to nurse at night less when she’s not next to him) came tothe bed to nurse Paul who had awakened. I stumbled over to the couch (as there isn’t muchroom in the small futon for three now - we’ll have to get a bigger one someday if Paul doesn’twant his own bed first). A few hours later I woke up to pee outside and went to the door -all, I think, in my sleep. Because what I remember is a dream (that I didn’t realizewas a dream) that for some reason I had to hold up the yurt door which was removed from theyurt and sitting in the middle of the floor. I called Sage to help (panicking her - how wouldyou like to wake up to someone crying help?) because the door was extremely heavy and fallingtowards me. A few seconds later, after Sage asked what was wrong and I started to explain it,the magic of the dream was gone. I realize now that I had walked in my sleep to the door, andmy mind (with it’s internal compass sort of sense of direction) recalled getting up, walking afew paces to the right, turning right and taking a few more paces. That is what got me to thedoor walking from the couch. My sense of direction though is relative and as I had forgottenthat I had moved to the couch. From the bed that same path would have brought me to thecenter of the yurt. I think also that I may have been leaning on the door frame (when I’mreally tired my balance (Paul does too). And the pressure of my leaning on the doormay have been misinterpereted by my sleep-fuzzed mind as the pressure of the door falling onme.

That’s a helpful story for me to remember. InLiving the Mindful Life by Charles T. Tart (I think that’s where I’m remembering thisfrom) he talks about the waking mind and the dreaming mind. In general (except in instanceslike the above), as you dream your mind sends a signal to your muscles effectively paralyzingyou to prevent your flailing about as you dream - running from monsters, swinging your armsaround, whatever. In the daytime that safety is gone (of course). However many of us (mostof us I’d venture) live not in reality so much as a waking dreaming state of unmindfulness.Instead of perceiving the world and reacting to it, we perceive bits of reality, our mindfills in the rest with assumptions, predictions and other useless drivel and we react to that(nearly always incorrect) version of reality. In my heightened state of unmindfulness(mindlessness?) brought on by sleep I assumed that the direction I walked lead me to thecenter of the room and that the fact that I met a door there meant not that my assumptionswere incorrect but instead that there must be a door in the middle of the room falling on topof me. I think that happens a lot to me in my daily life of interpersonal relations. I makelots of assumptions about what peoples’ tone means (to the extent that I might even assume themere existence of a tone, what peoples’ motivations are, whatever. In reacting, Ireact not to the human being sitting across from me but to the fanciful creation of my mind.By employing one’s mind as a sort of bogus body language and intent translator you get intothe trouble that I saw once in a SNL skit from years ago. In it, the president and thepremier of the USSR were at a negotiation table. The president would say something and thetranslator would translate it to Russian (with english subtitles) and then you’d hear theRussian speak in Russian (with subtitles in english) and hear what the translator said. Itstarted out just fine but then as the talks progressed the translator started to modify thetranslations more and more outrageously. The president’s saying “I think that we shouldreduce nuclear proliferation throughout Europe.” would be translated into something like“I think I’d like to sleep with your daughter.” So that’s part of why I’ve beenreading lots about mindfulness and trying my best to practice it. Partly to help quiet themind but mostly to do my best to fire my translator.

How many of you need to fire your translators?

Five days until I turn 30.

Both are forms of objectification.