Life As Performance Art 98

I slept well last night. Sleep is always a crapshoot for me. This is the real reason I want to retire, and soon. My sleep patterns do not adjust well to my work schedule. This has always been for me a problem. It's exhausting. The worst thing about this is that I cannot trace the cause. If something stressful happens during the day, I might sleep well that night, maybe not. If everything goes tickety-boo, I might be up half the night, or I will sleep like the proverbial baby (wake up crying every two hours!), or I will actually sleep very well, deeply and decently. And the dreams, when I do sleep well. Lat night was especially lively. I won't go into a lot of detail here because it could mean a lot of boring explanations, but I think I was again hanging out with some of my dead friends. I seem to have this tendency of being visited in my dreams by people who have died, and somehow they are supporting, helping and teaching me through their friendship while I am sleeping. Does anyone else every have this kind of experience? Please let me know. I concluded my last dream having an emotional confrontation with an Israeli who had served in the army. I told him, when he admitted that he had killed people, that he had innocent blood on his hands for all the Palestinians he had killed, and that they have to find a way to peacefully coexist if both peoples want to learn how to occupy Israel and Palestine together and cooperatively. I just was not happy with that individual. there was something very smug and self-satisfied about him that turned my stomach. (By the way, I would have been every bit as hardass with a Palestinian militant. I don't take sides.) Only when I wake up do I realize I have been dreaming, that's how real it is for me, Gentle Reader. Since I meet interesting people and encounter interesting experiences throughout my average day, then I don't think the dreams are compensatory. It could be that I'm just overstimulated. My mind and my imagination are always on, it seems. There is always something going on. It almost seems like a psychiatric diagnosis, this not knowing whether I am sleeping or dreaming. But right now, while I am writing this and listening to a boring wealthy restaurant owner who seems to have bought his way onto the CBC, I am thinking of how this wealthy individual is a symptom of everything that is wrong with us. For a lot of people, it still seems that money makes the world go around. Well, it makes their little world go around, but I almost feel sorry for them. Not a lot of people seem to have the courage to venture out into this good night unprotected. I do this every day. No phone, no ipod, and sometimes it is a bit scary and overwhelming, because there is so much going on around me. But isn't that the way it has always been? I don't think that any of us are really going to live and appreciate life without somehow making ourselves vulnerable to life. This isn't always going to be easy or pleasant. Living here in the Downtown South, which is rather an unsafe area, one has to be almost constantly vigilant. I already mentioned the crazy guy who tried to spill my milk the other day. I think he wasn't really dangerous, that he just wanted to make contact, but not in an appropriate manner, and that he was acting in a way that could very easily have escalated into something dangerous. In the meantime, everyone goes around shielded and disconnected. Rather like they are hypnotized. They do not seem to think or even wonder if it is worth the risk, making themselves vulnerable. They are the walking dead.