Of dreams and battles in other tongues

I dream active dreams

Vivid dreams find a landscape in my sleep, and I cannot account for when they occur apart from when there is too much fat in my food close to when I take my pills, that the interaction between the chemicals allows for that side effect.

At other times, it is a busy day that leaves me so utterly exhausted, once I fall asleep, there is a kind of incapacitation that helps my relaxation, but I get any sleep I can whenever I can, for there is a tendency to insomnia that I try to arrest before it takes hold.

One apparent sleep disorder I have endured is parasomnia, where undesirable and physical events occur in my sleep that I am punching out or kicking out, at other times, I am talking in my sleep and rarely in typical conversation but in serious confrontation with people or situations that occasion possible or imminent harm.

Winning in all fights

From deep within my psyche, I find myself engaged in some sort of spiritual warfare, speaking out against assailants to the scheme of the Acts of Apostles. Fundamentally, I am a man of intense spiritual persuasion and belief that some realms in which I dwell are multidimensional and needing of presence in attention, observation, assertion, understanding, engagement, and conflict where you should triumph.

One other peculiarity is whilst English is my mother tongue and Yoruba is a learned language, my dream language is usually strongly Yoruba than English, I seem to be more assertive and sure of myself and what I determine to do in that language with a lot more clarity and forcefulness. I marvel at the power of dreams and what many victories I have been conferred with when met with an attack.

Dreamscape: Parasomnia to the rescue

A low form of sleep

Brian is probably the most aware of episodes of parasomnia demonstrated in REM (Rapid Eye Movement) Sleep Behaviour Disorder that I have exhibited over time when I have vocalised, acted out or even kicked him violently in bed. My dreams can be quite vivid and the fact that during REM Sleep my muscles are not relaxed and temporarily paralysed could probably be related to my medication, but I have for a lifetime suffered a spectrum of parasomnia short of somnambulism. [Sleep Foundation: REM Sleep Behaviour Disorder]

After work, I took a nap and had classical music playing in the background, my phone rang waking me up, but I just turned over not to excite myself too much out of the slumber that had seemed to set in. Soon I was enraptured in the throes of dreamland.

Into dreamhood

There is a characteristic of my dreams that appears to link into episodes eked out of long-held memories probably from other dreams that makes certain encounters seem like a continuing story. I was walking up an exposed corridor with an overhanging roof when I noticed a lady I knew in some sort of distress, two men on either side of her appearing to threaten her, but since they were outside, I felt if anything happened, I could call up a crowd and the police on them.

One of the men happened to be Boris Johnson, and that might have been inspired by news of when he with a friend arranged to have a journalist beaten up. The stuff of dreams draws from inexhaustible material. [The Guardian: A couple of black eyes]

Soon, another man I did not recognise walked up and they now took the lady into a room. As they did that, I called out to her, by name and asked if everything was Okay, whilst she said she was, that is not what I heard in her voice, they were going to rough her up and I was reaching for my phone to call the police.

Acting out the dream

I could hear a bit of thumping in the room, and I suspect from what I overheard in the snatches of conversation in that room, they wanted to know how much I knew about them. I guess they were about to include me in their nefarious activity when that man I did not know came out and walked towards me, because I was not leaving until I was sure she was fine.

As he approached me, I could hear myself say in a loud voice, “Do you want to know who I am?” as I woke up out of the dream. Sometimes, this happens as a safety reflect preventing an escalation or a deterioration leading to harm for myself and stress on my mental and nervous system. I probably need to visit a sleep clinic to study the phenomenon better.

However, it was another bout of parasomnia and my sleep was over with me thinking if the dream had continued, as there were many people around, I was about to shout out to them. “Call the police on these thugs.” It is likely, that dream might continue in another episode of Dreamscape, the vivid dreams of I and the parasomnia that defines them.