dot four

Tonight I feel compelled to make a dot on the non-cohesive thoughts flowing through my head. I am reading a novel called "What is the What" about a boy named Valentino Achek Deng who walks through civil war-torn Sudan, lives in refugee camps in Kenya, and eventually makes it to America to be coldly robbed in his apartment in Atlanta.

The content of my pre-bedtime novel has a tendency to seep into my dreams. The other night I was tirelessly defending myself against a cruel man with a shot gun. Throughout the dream scene I held a purple shot gun in my pocket but refused to take it out in fear that if the attacker were to see my purple shot gun, he would feel all the more obliged to shoot me.

Many people tell me my dreams are intense. While studying to be certified as a sexual assault crisis counselor, I lived through a variety of rape scenes first person, waking in a state of relief. Had I actually experienced the trauma while conscious, the affect on my persona would be vastly different. The assaults were vicarious; a product of curiosity and study.

For some reason I'm reminded of the BFG (Big Friendly Giant.) I can't remember much from the Ronald Dahl book, but I do recall the BFG emerging during an hour of the night when every other being in the scope of the story is fast asleep, tapped out from any conscious state. Reading this novel as a child, I recall wondering if such an hour or segment of time truly did exist. Can all people, at once, truly be asleep? At this moment of black peace, is there solace in the nothingness of the unconscious?

It's hard to tell if knowing you are one thing or another really aids in one's discovery of a moment, a purpose, a problem. You may know that you are influenced by your blood, running strong with alcoholism, a harsh temper, a frugal hand, but can this awareness ultimately contribute to the achievement of some sort of nirvana?

I've jumped off any sort of train of thought.

A dot: do you know who you are? Are you found in your dreams, or in your waking hours?