Tuesday, September 19, 2006
International design
In the present, I believe I had parasomnia. The symptoms? Consistant and prolonged sleeptalking. Aparently I am up to about 5 times a week. I say anything from "no thankyou" to long moans, groans, and rude comments. It scares my roommate, and intrigues me. After I did some reaserach, I found that sleeptalking is often a result of either an anxiety disorder, or prolonged supressed stress. Believing that I have found a peaceful and meaningful existence amidst my world of chaos, I fight with the idea that I may be stressed. I meditate, I read, I contemplate and I relax daily but maybe its beyond all those things that something is eating away inside me. Mom says I am lucky; I have an efficient, nonbothersome way to relieve my stress and I do it unconsiously. I say I am troubled; what is going on inside of me that I am so out of touch with?
For those of you who read frequently, you are aware that once apon a time I had a fish named Dino who died after his long voyage home with me back to Oregon. After much time to recover, I have found a new companion, Dino Junior (Deej as we like to call him) and he swims actively in his bowl on my desk right now as I type away. I love to fade away and watch him float in his environment. He finds my finger to be his enemy and will attack it if I challenge him. Sometimes we have wars over little flakes of fish food, other times we play hide and seek behind the nice green water-fern I put in his bowl. For the most part I am happy to have a buddy by my side at all times and am hoping the entertainment he provides me will reduce my sleeptalking stress. As of right now, he's destracting me from my philosophy homework.
Speaking of philosophy, this evening I attended a pannel discussion on the death penalty. Good talk, nice atmosphere, hot coffee and tasty cookies later, I found myself wondering if there will ever be a state where everyone is satisfied. There are always the dictators, the true patriots, the challengers, the defenders, the loyals, the rebels, the revolutionaries and the movers and there has been since the beginning of government. Then my mind tinkers with the idea of no government at all; complete anarchy some would say. But man has never existed that way. As much as we draft that experience into all of our personal myths of human origin, I am pretty sure that someone has always been either secured, protected, bossed around, or taken orders from another if just for their own well-being. In every relationship I have, I form a pact, a covinent of agreements that we will not violate; I will try my best not to hurt you, I promise to offer you my honest self, you will stick up for me, we will obligate ourselves to X amount of time. Its all a contract for physical and emotional benefit. According to Hobbes and Machievelli, all contracts are the simplist form of laws. So if I and everyone around me governs there own lives with laws, than how can we expect a large group of selves to exist without them. Personally, I dont want any. I can picture such a utopia where all give, all recieve, and all agree to live for the betterment of man without ever back-crossing another person in the community. I can see this yes; i can dwell in the image, toy with it, even hope to experience it someday....but until I see it myself, this reasoning does no good because I live, we all live, outside of those social standards. We have made, and take part in a society that rewards selfishness, shoots for excessive wealth at the expense of others, and kills criminals by asking one of its own citizens to take his life (a phsycian talked tonight about having to administer lethal injections. INteresting viewpoint. One deserves to die but who deserves to have the guilt of killing him?). Politics is too complicated.
I am about to crawl up onto my bed, set my alarm, and look out the window into the endless sea of LA lights and before closing my eyes, try to rid my head of all these thoughts just so that the dull numbness of sleep can take me down. Maybe sleeptalking is like death-if you predict it will happen, it wont. Only when you forget about it will it find you.
Moral of the story-think about death tonight ¶ 10:22 PM
For those of you who read frequently, you are aware that once apon a time I had a fish named Dino who died after his long voyage home with me back to Oregon. After much time to recover, I have found a new companion, Dino Junior (Deej as we like to call him) and he swims actively in his bowl on my desk right now as I type away. I love to fade away and watch him float in his environment. He finds my finger to be his enemy and will attack it if I challenge him. Sometimes we have wars over little flakes of fish food, other times we play hide and seek behind the nice green water-fern I put in his bowl. For the most part I am happy to have a buddy by my side at all times and am hoping the entertainment he provides me will reduce my sleeptalking stress. As of right now, he's destracting me from my philosophy homework.
Speaking of philosophy, this evening I attended a pannel discussion on the death penalty. Good talk, nice atmosphere, hot coffee and tasty cookies later, I found myself wondering if there will ever be a state where everyone is satisfied. There are always the dictators, the true patriots, the challengers, the defenders, the loyals, the rebels, the revolutionaries and the movers and there has been since the beginning of government. Then my mind tinkers with the idea of no government at all; complete anarchy some would say. But man has never existed that way. As much as we draft that experience into all of our personal myths of human origin, I am pretty sure that someone has always been either secured, protected, bossed around, or taken orders from another if just for their own well-being. In every relationship I have, I form a pact, a covinent of agreements that we will not violate; I will try my best not to hurt you, I promise to offer you my honest self, you will stick up for me, we will obligate ourselves to X amount of time. Its all a contract for physical and emotional benefit. According to Hobbes and Machievelli, all contracts are the simplist form of laws. So if I and everyone around me governs there own lives with laws, than how can we expect a large group of selves to exist without them. Personally, I dont want any. I can picture such a utopia where all give, all recieve, and all agree to live for the betterment of man without ever back-crossing another person in the community. I can see this yes; i can dwell in the image, toy with it, even hope to experience it someday....but until I see it myself, this reasoning does no good because I live, we all live, outside of those social standards. We have made, and take part in a society that rewards selfishness, shoots for excessive wealth at the expense of others, and kills criminals by asking one of its own citizens to take his life (a phsycian talked tonight about having to administer lethal injections. INteresting viewpoint. One deserves to die but who deserves to have the guilt of killing him?). Politics is too complicated.
I am about to crawl up onto my bed, set my alarm, and look out the window into the endless sea of LA lights and before closing my eyes, try to rid my head of all these thoughts just so that the dull numbness of sleep can take me down. Maybe sleeptalking is like death-if you predict it will happen, it wont. Only when you forget about it will it find you.
Moral of the story-think about death tonight ¶ 10:22 PM
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Very intriguing post, Kara. I enjoyed reading it :]
Also, a couple times a year, I go through a really big sleeptalking phase, or so I'm told. It's interesting to learn it might be stress/anxiety related. I personally find it an amusing quirk.
Also, a couple times a year, I go through a really big sleeptalking phase, or so I'm told. It's interesting to learn it might be stress/anxiety related. I personally find it an amusing quirk.
kara, i talk in my sleep too, and i'm sure that mine is stress related because last year it always got worse around finals and when i got homesick. although i too wish that i were truly stress-free, i have to agree with your mom that it's nice we can relieve it in our sleep, when we're not even aware of it.
Elizabeth was singing in her sleep a couple nights ago. The words were unintelligible mumbles, but there was definately some sort of tune behind them.
Could be worse. There are people who have the opposite: instead of not being paralyzed while dreaming, they wake up paralyzed, and often bring their dreams into the waking world with them as hallucinations. Other people have sex or are violent with their partners in bed. Me? Well, I just sleep a lot. The medical word is "Hypersomnia" for that one.
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Could be worse. There are people who have the opposite: instead of not being paralyzed while dreaming, they wake up paralyzed, and often bring their dreams into the waking world with them as hallucinations. Other people have sex or are violent with their partners in bed. Me? Well, I just sleep a lot. The medical word is "Hypersomnia" for that one.
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