Night Mov-ies

“What are you thinking about the moment right before you fall asleep?”

            It is a question I have asked since I was a child.  Things are so weird in my own head, I wanted to make sure everyone else was like me or I was like them.  Of course, I found out I wasn’t … like them and to be careful of whom I asked the question and to never ever tell what went on in my mind.

            And I’m not talking about sexual fantasies.  Those fall into a different category and time frame.

            I’m talking about when the temperature is right, the covers are situated, the other (partner, lover, dog, cat or teddy bear) is quiet, the darkness lays soft, the pillows are in their correct position and the night clouds are gently passing by on the inside of your eyelids.  (Does yours change color, have lightening bolts, swirl in patterns, faces?)  Right there at that exact moment of pre-sleep.  What are you thinking of?

            Is it what happened today or what might happen tomorrow?  Is it that you should get up and check the expiration date of the milk you just ate three bowls of cereal with?  Did that burp taste a little off?  Maybe it’s that perceived insult from a coworker (who, right now, is having wild sex with her boyfriend and is definitely not lying around thinking about you) that’s floating around in there.  Or is it worry over that spot growing on the back of your right calf that you can almost see by twisting into a pretzel.  

            I tell myself stories, bedtime stories.  There are whole towns, countries, planets and universes inside my head all populated by a citizenry of characters.  There are good guys and bad guys, evil deed doers and lovers, friends and enemies, aliens and fantasy folks.  It can be any time, past, present or future.  It can be any place, real or imagined.  It can be any season or time of day or night.

            My passport into this world is to lay comfortable, close off my ‘oh my god did I lock the door, turn off the coffee pot and what was that noise’ voice, drift with those clouds and form a picture in my head.  It can be absolutely anywhere at absolutely anytime.  Next, I people it with . . . well, people.  Historical, fictional, real or ones I don’t know where they come from.  They just show up fully formed and alive (relatively speaking).  Story lines, plots and acting and reacting with each other just happens.  I don’t plot my dreams and I don’t plot these semi-dreams, day-(night)-dreams.  I step into the story all ready knowing my place and my lines but I don’t know how I all ready know that.

            Adventures in the mind are more thrilling and less dangerous than real ones, the star is always me, as the director I can take the story anywhere and they’re really not very expensive at all. 

            Sometimes, there are some really great plots or lines of dialogue or one of those ‘ah ha’ moments when I know whatever I’m seeing or doing in there, would make an incredible novel.  I know I have to wake up long enough to jot down a few words, just enough for me to remember this enormous idea for a book.  I keep a pad and pen by the bed for just these occasions (and can never interrupt my handwriting in the morning) but normally I don’t get up.  Moving will destroy the fragile bubble of the world that I am encased in.  So I convince myself I will remember and keep repeating a phrase that will be my mantra to unlock the story into a novel.  (These are the mornings when the other person in bed wakes up craving sesame chicken for breakfast and doesn’t know why.  It wasn’t real sesame seeds in there but poison disguised as sesame seeds.  Let’s hope I never chant ‘the gun is in the bottom drawer under my thongs’ or something along those lines.)  But I never remember.  I always forget in the clatter of the alarm clock.  Whole libraries of New York Times Bestseller List novels have been lost because I didn’t get up and write down the idea.

            Normally, my semi-dreaming fades into real dreaming and sleep.  Rarely, my self-told story becomes my self-told dream and I can become even more a part of my own story.  Those are great dreams unlike the normal ‘I’m in trouble with my mother for doing or not doing or not doing something right that I didn’t know I was supposed not be or to be doing right in the first place’ dreams.  I would much rather dream of rescuing my beloved from the deep dark dank cave where the baddie is holding him captive until I deliver the secret formula for … zzzzz.

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            Please note:  The above mentioned technique works well in doctors’ and dentists’ offices, the Department of Motor Vehicles and Thanksgiving dinners with the in-laws but is not the prescribed method for dealing with traffic jams or that stoplight that catches me everyday no matter how fast or slow I drive.

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