Sleepless in Manila

Argee has been having trouble sleeping (What a nightmare!). And with the shepherd at the back of his head having finally run out of sheep to count, he doesn’t think he’ll be getting any more sleep soon. He’s done everything from warm tea to those 15-minute workouts. Even moving his bed around every other night, and sprinkling onion skin on his sheets (some neighbors give the strangest advice). He’s even gone so far as to ask Honey for help which is rare for a Neanderthal archetype. So, she then advised him to bring a rock to bed. He then wondered what kind of superstitious fluke she had gone on to pick up this time, up until she clarified it was for knocking himself over in the head. He would’ve clarified her himself, but unfortunately, he’s this much closer to following her advice.

A friend once told Argee that being a lawyer would soon come back to haunt him. "Good sleep rides on a clear conscience," he went on to say. And although he doesn’t consider himself to have a muddy conscience — he’s got a pile of it spread like liverspread on his skin — he must admit (sadly enough) that it’s given him enough reason to actually pause and reflect. Give him a break, he’s desperate to get a restraining order for the capital punishment of non-somnolence.

But then again, it could just be the work. Maybe the fast-paced life of a good-looking and enviously-talented attorney is finally getting to him (Daydreaming again? — Argee). Or maybe extraterrestrial forces are working to negate his ability to sleep entirely. Or, and rather far-fetched, he’s actually getting old.

Then it could just be the dreams he’s been having.

One would ask the legitimate question of how one could possibly be having dreams with a sleep deficiency. Although he admits that he hardly sleeps, for him to not sleep entirely is just plain impossible. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be hunched over the computer with his fingers drizzling down on the keyboard with (near) perfect grammar, punctuation and sentence structure. Of course Argee is staving off the demons of fatigue on his shoulder, he does have the few couple of hours of sleep if he tries hard enough. But, as you’ve already figured, it’s just not enough.

Back to his dreams.

As you may have realized, he could’ve skipped all the humdrum of his lack of sleep and just gone on to tell you that he’s been having strange dreams. But that would’ve meant missing up on a dramatic introduction. And, for all the usual length of this Friday session of the Court, the dreams he’s been having have been pretty damn dramatic.

It always begins after he’s brushed his teeth and wobbled on off to bed. He prays for a good night’s sleep to come his way and he ends up staring at the ceiling for the next three hours. Afterwards, mostly due to the exhaustion of waiting, he finally drifts on to sleep. And that’s when his strange dream begins.

He’s four years old again (though one can never be certain of anything in the subconscious), and he’s back in the old kitchen of his folks. The old Westinghouse is still clean and intact at the corner of the room, with my collection of dishes and soup bowls with their floral markings still unfaded. Hung over the kitchen wall is a picture of the last supper, and beside that a few photographs of lolo and lola. The amount of detail never fails to frighten him, but then again, he’s not really sure how well he remembers things anyway.

And on top of the kitchen table is a pale-orange, ceramic jar labeled cookies (Sounds too much like an Americanized cliché? But Argee’s house did have one, honestly). His mom, being the warm children loving lass that most moms are, always made sure that that particular jar had at least some resemblance of cookies in it. It was hardly ever empty. And if it was, that was because he had usually eaten it all. And there it was, on top of the kitchen table, waiting for him.

At the age of 33, picking up a jar of cookies hardly seems like a task at all, but at a dream-age of four, merely scaling the kitchen table is some feat indeed. And as he tried his best to reach for his pale-orange prize, the jar just seemed to be too far from reach. Later on into his frustration, an unfamiliar adult figure tramps into the kitchen, opens the jar, picks out a cookie and leaves. He tries even harder to reach the jar up until another adult figure waltzes in and does the same. Opens the jar. Picks out a cookie. Leaves. And soon yet another adult. And another. And another.

It doesn’t seem like too much of a nightmare. But trapped in a four-year-old incarnation of yourself, not having your cookies is unexaggeratedly traumatic. It’s preadolescent helplessness all over again. And to think that Argee is still in a post-pubescent-pre-midlife crisis! And so he wakes in cold sweat, dazed and confused, realizing that he’s thankfully 33 again (Thank God for some honesty here — Honey), and too shook up to try and go back to sleep.

But what power must dreams have to incapacitate men? Sigmund Freud once claimed that with our consciousness retired for the evening, our subconscious is free to run amuck in our dreams. He also went on to say that dreams of water (in a glass or in a lake) are indications of denial, while dreams of flying connote signs of sexual repression. Dying in a dream, on the other hand, is actually not so bad. It supposedly signifies the passing of your old self and the emergence of a new and more defined consciousness (a playground for the innately suicidal).

A lot of you folks might find this tidbit interesting, but Argee for one, does not. He thinks he’s had enough of unreachable cookies and overbearing adults to last him a lifetime or two. Sleep is bliss only for those who catch their ZZZZs without going through the alphabet of sleeping pills.

Top Ten Cures For Sleeplessness

1. Drinking hot milk.

2. Crying yourself to sleep over spilt milk.

3. Watching song-and-dance numbers from the Indian channel of cable TV

4. Listening to AM radio at 1 a.m.

5. A good massage.

6. Stormy weather.

7. Counting cobwebs on the ceiling.

8. Getting a solid kick from Red Horse.

9. Recalling the lyrics from this what’s-the-name-of-that-song that contains the phrase Making Love Out of Nothing at All by Air Supply.

10. Blush, blush: making love of nothing at all