Sommeil

11.7.07

She sleeps with leopard ear muffs on and often a NY Yankees cap as well. Wrapped around a scruffy stuffed mutt, she holds on to her dreams and wakes heavily, dragging her eyelids open only after my prodding and coo-ing in her ear. This girl lives more fiercely in her moments than anyone I know. Whether telling stories at the dinner table while her food grows cold, then guzzling her milk so she can catch up with the rest of us, or reading the latest Harry Potter so intently, she can be lost on the toilet for 1/2 an hour. I love that about childhood and mourn my own lack of complete concentration as I try to balance so many demands in life. Even sleep, that surest sanctuary is divided by dreams and other worlds than my own.

We speak of dreams, places in our minds where the world is different from our reality. In sleep those places can be marvelous or treacherous, but in waking our "day" dreams are usually of the wishful sort. During the night we battle demons and re-visit old haunts. When distracted at work or on our commute, however, it is the sandy beaches or the bachelor next door that we think about, not the torments of life. Are the dark hours our battle and the light our playgrounds?

When we wake panting from the chase or aroused from a seduction, our bodily reactions are the same as if the action were real. Our heart races, we may scream or feel the after maths of an orgasm. So, how is this cerebral and corporal experience not as real as if we had been chased by our psycho neighbor or royally screwed by the pool boy? What then is real if we think and feel the same way regardless of conscious state?

What is reality when an group of people can experience an event in as many different ways as there are pairs of eyes watching? My daughter the other night asked what the word "exit" means and we got into a discussion of whether or not her bed railing really was wood when on a "subatomic level it's all just bowling balls whirring around" as she put it. On the one hand we perceive it as solid matter, but under an electron microscope it is indeed just a massing of atoms careening against each other. Is one more correct than the other?

George Bush perceived 9-11 as an assault against our sovereign soil and a Jihadist saw it as self defence against our evil empire. A wife percieves that her husband "never" puts down the toilet lid. He's convinced he does. One person thinks the word "never" means 0% of the time ("I never drink cider.") and another thinks it means %100 of the time. ("I always dont' drink cider.") Who is right?

Perception is our reality, then, at any given moment. A person who was once beloved to us and thus beautiful can look like an ugly ogre when they break our hearts. Same person, different point of view. When worldviews collide it is because we refuse to see anything from any other perspective than our own and this inflexibility is the source of all conflict from interpersonal to cross cultural.

A child sees the world in black and white, and sleeping in ear muffs makes complete sense even when it's summer. Even though Hanah dresses like a "ragamuffin," in her eyes, she has "Hanah style" and flaunts it. We think we live in teh land of freedom and Ossama Bin Laden thinks we're slaves to our corrupt corporate and god-less culture. Who's right?

Today, my 9 and 11 year old turned a corner and begain cooperating with each other without my input. Are they seeing each other's point of view? Or are they choosing paths of least resistance? Either way, they are learning to navigate their worlds, flexing their perception muscles. Whatever they are doing, it must be working, for they sleep without remorse and wake with open hearts.