I'm Only Sleeping

When I wake up early in the morning,
Lift my head, I'm still yawning
When I'm in the middle of a dream
Stay in bed, float up stream

Please don't wake me, no don't shake me
Leave me where I am
I'm only sleeping

Everybody seems to think I'm lazy
I don't mind, I think they're crazy
Running everywhere at such a speed
Till they find, there's no need

Please don't spoil my day I'm miles away
And after all I'm only sleeping

Keeping an eye on the world going by my window
Taking my time

Lying there and staring at the ceiling
Waiting for a sleepy feeling

- The Beatles

***

A good friend once told me that she had the tendency to sleep a lot when she’s depressed. It was later when I found out that she has also been diagnosed with narcolepsy. Regardless, I’ve found this to be true from personal experience three weeks ago, which was weird since I’m a body intolerant of too much sleep except maybe on weekends, and I think the best explanation I got was from Raymond Calbay’s blog, which I will quote:

…I remember reading something that explains why some people are taken to sleeping like hell: it's a panacea to the answerless-ness of the conscious. Sounds like a mystification, but I think makes some sense. It's a paradox though since people would not hesitate to shove under your nose the 123s they understand the moment you sound off a question mark in your sentence. In this city, people only find watermelon seeds useful when its all dried-up already for the chewing. What I'm saying's life gets entangled with business, the practical precision of the evident real. Sleeping unlatches the hold of a wordy world.Sleep offers a blank canvass--the primordial silence of the universe--where dream is a possibility and not a synonym of ambition or protracted action. The body surrenders the sensation of the colored TV and the distant howling of dogs and lets the seed inside stretch its hum. Except in instances of lucid dreaming, I don't remember much of what happens in my sleep, but I always feel better, like I've grown a leaf or two.So in the morning, with death rehearsed, my body reawakens to more life than ever, tilting to the east, to the sun.

Amen.

***

It’s even nicer to find some of the more pleasant dreams resurfacing as reality—like that one night the Dumaguete fellows (along with the UP Bangus group) got together at Conspiracy for a reunion. It had such impact I dreamt about us back to the languorous lifestyle we had this summer for the next following days. Then there’s Nek on her second week here in ABS. It’s like being back in college again—or more accurately, fulfilling what we’ve fancied way back then: to work together in the same company and just be the eternal juvenile mischiefs.

***

My niece Hanna celebrated her third birthday last October 8. Then on the 11th it was her baby brother Gabby’s first. They’re having a joint party set with The Incredibles theme on the 15th. For their invites my sister had “movie tickets” made. This:

What you can’t see--or at least not that clearly--are the “photoshop-ed” faces of my niece and nephew as Dash and Violet. Hilarious.