January 2006 Issue, Vol. 28
Getting There
Let’s start with a riddle: What is easier to do if you try not to do it and harder to do if you try? The answer: falling asleep!
Imagine it is Christmas Eve. Santa Claus is coming in the morning, and the grown-ups are all saying, “Go to sleep. Santa won’t come if you’re awake!” So, of course, going to sleep is the last thing you feel like doing. And the harder you try, the more awake you feel. But sooner or later you do fall asleep. You don’t remember falling asleep because no one ever remembers that moment. But you must have fallen asleep because now you are waking up, and Santa Claus has come.
The experts will tell you it was hard to get to sleep because you were thinking too much about Christmas. That makes sense. But sometimes the same thing happens when there’s nothing special ahead, when tomorrow is just another day. It’s not your birthday; your favorite uncle is not coming for a visit. And yet every time you start to get sleepy your sleepiness goes away.
Have you ever thought you saw something out of the corner of your eye, but when you turned and looked, there was nothing there at all? You probably thought you’d only imagined it. But what if you were right in the first place? What if you had seen something, something that disappeared as soon as you tried to see it better?
Sleep is like that. You can’t look for it directly; you can’t let it know you’re expecting it to show up. Remember the story of “The Elves and the Shoemaker”? The elves helped the shoemaker every night until he showed that he knew they were there. Then the next day they were gone. There are forces like that in the Universe, kindly forces, well-meaning, helpful forces that look out for us but prefer not to be seen. So if you act like you know they’re around or show you’re on to them, they’re gone in an instant, and they won’t be quick to return.
We’ve asked around the Bureau and found most of us at one time or another have made the shoemaker’s mistake. We’ve been too eager when we should have been quiet and discreet. One of our technicians put it this way: “I’m lying there in bed, and after a while I find I’m starting to drift to sleep. It’s then that I make my mistake. I think to myself, ‘Here I go; I’m falling asleep!’ But no sooner do I think about falling asleep than–poof!–I’m fully awake. The thing to remember is never, never tell yourself you’re about to fall asleep. Don’t think about it! Don’t think about anything at all!”
But how do we think about nothing? Well, there’s the old idea of counting sheep. It is supposed to be so boring that the brain shuts down. But what works for one of us may not work for others. Snooze News therefore invites our readers to share their own how-to-get-sleepy tricks. Write us and let us know what techniques you use to move yourself from the waking world to the world of sleep. Do you slow down your breathing? Do you hum inside your head? Just how do you turn out the light in your brain after you’ve turned out the light by your bed?
January 5, 2000
Recorded in the Bureau of Dreams Studio
Interviewer: Meagan Konold
An Interview with Ranger Oliver Warren – Part Three
Meagan: Good evening Ranger Oliver Warren. And good evening to our listening audience. This is Meagan Konold with the Bureau of Dreams. Tonight is my third interview with Ranger Oliver Warren—my third and final interview, I’m sorry to say.
Oliver: I’m afraid so, Meagan. As much as I’ve enjoyed our interviews, I stayed longer than I should have last month and was late for my client’s bedtime. I almost missed the start of his first dream. I’m sure you know what that means.
Meagan: I do, but maybe you’d better explain to our audience.
Oliver: Well, we’re supposed to be on duty a good fifteen minutes before sleep sets in. You have to be there, ready to go, because it’s next to impossible to join a dream if you’re not there at the start. It only takes a moment before the trail grows dim. All you have is a hint, a rapidly fading hint, telling you whether the dream is starting out pleasantly or not. But dreams shift, you know. A pleasant dream can turn unpleasant, and there’s nothing you can do for your client if you’re not there.
Meagan: So if you’re late, you’re out of luck for the night?
Oliver: Pretty much. The best you can do is wait around and hope a new dream comes along—because sometimes, just sometimes, you can grab a hold of a later dream just as it’s starting and swing on aboard. But late dream entry is never easy. It’s sort of like . . . well, think of it like this: You know those merry-go-rounds, the kind they used to have on playgrounds, the ones you got moving by running in a circle, pushing faster and faster before you jump on?
Meagan: Sure.
Oliver: Well, it’s tricky enough to jump on one of those merry-go-rounds once they’re moving even when you’re the one holding on to the bars and doing the pushing. But imagine coming up to one that is spinning away faster and faster. And imagine that you not only have to jump on but that you have to jump on at precisely at the right place. You can’t just land anywhere.
Meagan: Are you saying dreams move fast?
Oliver: Well, no. It’s not quite that simple. I guess all I’m trying to say is that a dream in full swing is not one a ranger can just walk up to and hop on. But there comes a moment when one dream is ending and another is about to begin. At that moment—it’s a brief one—you can slip on in. But the timing is tricky. If you make your move too soon and the first dream hasn’t quite finished, you get flung back, just the way a spinning merry-go-round tries to send you flying off in the wrong direction. If you make your move too late, the same thing happens. Your dreamer and the dream have moved on and you’re flung back on your tail, wondering what hit you.
Meagan: I see what you mean, Oliver. But let me ask you something. Not everyone has a Dream Ranger. And those who don’t have one seem to get along. So why worry about missing one night? One bad dream can’t really hurt you.
Oliver: Not physically. You don’t wake up with bruises and bumps, but a bad dream can give you a bad day and that affects everything you do.
Meagan: Give me an example.
Oliver: Well, say you dream about spiders, a whole room of spiders, ankle deep and crawling up the walls.
Meagan: Thank you, Oliver. I’d rather not.
Oliver: Yes, but let’s say you do, and then later the following day a spider, a harmless little eight-legger minding its own business, drops down on its thread in front of your face. Instead of thinking “how cute; how clever!” you suddenly see the little critter as some great evil threat. You may not actively remember the dream you had, but the nasty feeling returns, and nasty feelings make people act nasty. You find yourself hating that spider and maybe doing it harm. See what I mean?
Meagan: I think I do. I had a dream once about my best friend in second grade. We were out on the playground, and Janet was her usual friendly self. Then all at once she turned on me—cold, cruel. The next morning, I couldn’t help feeling angry. Poor Janet! She didn’t know what she had done or why I was mad at her.
Oliver: That was probably a Twister. They do that. They show up in dreams and switch things around, most of the time making things worse. Your dream about Janet is pretty typical. A pleasant dream about a good friend turns into something nasty with Janet totally unlike her usual self. That’s the way with dreams. A long time back, people believed there were two gates, an ivory gate and a horn gate. Dreams that came through the ivory gate were false. But dreams that came to you through the gate of horn were true. We now know that isn’t how it works, but it doesn’t change the fact that some dreams are trustworthy and some are not. The problem is to figure out which is which.
Meagan: Not always easy, I’m sure. But these Twisters, can a Ranger stop them?
Oliver: Sometimes. But sometimes the Baddies win. Dream ranging is not a perfect science though we’re getting better all the time. The important thing is to be there for your client. There’s almost always something you can do to help. Let me tell you what my friend Alex did recently. His client was having a problem with a Stoker, one of those heavy-feeding, bloating ones.
Meagan: You’ve mentioned them before.
Oliver: Yes, I think I have. Anyhow, at first Alex tried the usual: getting between it and his client, growling, snapping at its heels, but nothing worked. The Stoker was growing bigger and bigger week by week. Finally Alex realized he had to come up with something different. So he stopped trying to scare it off and started making fun of it. He laughed at it, belittled it, treated its nastiest maneuvers like they were only a joke. At one point, Alex walked up to it, looked it up and down and said “You think you’re scary? I could dream something scarier with one eye still open.” By the time Alex was done, the Stoker had shrunk from around seven feet to less than four inches. At that point, it ran off and disappeared down a small hole. Alex heard a splash far below, then nothing more. The girl he works for hasn’t seen it since.
Meagan: Good for Alex!
Oliver: Good for his client too. Alex is pretty proud of the way he handled that Stoker.
Meagan: As well he should be. But it’s almost 8:00, and I think we need to spend our last few minutes explaining to the audience what you have in mind.
Oliver: Right, Meagan. It goes like this: I and several of my friends have come up with a plan. We’ve agreed to write up our own Ranger stories, and Snooze News has agreed to publish a chapter every month, starting with our recruitment and on into our nightly adventures out on the Dream Field. We’re hoping it catches on.
Meagan: I’m sure it will, Oliver. I look forward to reading your Ranger stories myself. But now our time really is up. Off you go!
Oliver: Goodnight then, Meagan! It’s been a pleasure.
Meagan: This is Meagan Konold wishing you all a good night. Sweet dreams to everyone
