Quitter

I think I had mentioned that at the place where I normally park my bike while at work, they had moved the bike racks to be closer to the attendants’ booth, to ward off theft and vandalism. Unfortunately, they also squeezed the racks into such a small area that it was difficult to impossible to get to many of the spaces, depending on when one arrived.

I started a fresh round of communications. I made phone calls. I sent emails. I drafted a letter to City Park. And then, you know what? I gave up, and it is very restful. I’d been pestering these people for more than four years, and it was worthwhile in that, in the racks’ former location, the attendants always made sure to leave the bikes plenty of room, which was not the case when I began my campaign. I will also say that the assistant building manager has been extremely kind to me. He’s a really sweet fellow.

The day before Independence Day, I arrived to find the garage closed, so I went to try my own building, which has very limited bike parking. Lo and behold, seven brand-new bike parking spaces had been added since the last time I’d been there. I was able to park, but there were only one or two spaces beyond that, so I contacted the new building manager, who is particularly friendly and cheerful, and we toured the garage together to scope out places for even more bike parking in the future.

There is a third bike rack that has a cage around it, which I always believed was restricted to a certain group, but the new building manager said it’s not, and said she had notified the group of that, AND she gave me the secret door code, in case I ever need to park there.

I thought of going ahead and sending my letter to City Park, anyway, just to acquaint them with my sentiments, but, ah, forget it. Now I park every day where there is sufficient bike parking, with great access, where more racks will likely be added when they are needed, and it is a huge relief to be rid of that stewing point (like a talking point, but less fun).

Last night I called my mother a bit later than usual, at 10:15 her time. She used to stay up until 3 a.m. routinely, but she has transformed herself into an early to bed, early to rise type of person, so I don’t usually call past 9 p.m., but I had had a perturbing social event, and since I forgot to get married, I have to call my mom when that happens (i.e., when there's anything I want to tell anyone). She answered right away and said, “I’m in my bed: it’s just a fact.”

Speaking of being in bed, I’ve re-embarked on the project of learning lucid dreaming, a nice hobby one can do right atop one's own mattress. I’ve always been interested in dreams, and at my hippie high school even took a class in dream analysis, with the same teacher who taught the creative problem solving class. The main prerequisite for being able to be conscious that one is dreaming is the ability to recall dreams, which I can easily do. I read something the other day that said you should be able to remember one dream per night before starting to work on lucid dreaming. I can often remember four, six, or more dreams, but I’ve only had one or two very brief lucid dreams in my entire life, which is rather frustrating.

(I did have a mesmerizingly beautiful dream once of riding my bicycle at night with silver moonlight gleaming all around me, which sort of makes up for it.)

My mother recently mentioned a podcast by Erin Pavlina (wife of Steve Pavlina) and I went and listened to it and was hugely inspired. She suggests trying to remain conscious until the moment of falling asleep in the hope that some consciousness will trickle into a dream. Her suggested method is to keep one’s eyes open as long as possible after retiring at bedtime.

I tried that and kept waking up over and over and then keeping my eyes open some more, per what I understood to be the instructions. After four or five days, I felt seriously terrible, even worse than after four or five days of mere trouble sleeping. Then I remembered: Isn’t sleep deprivation something we do to people we want to torture, if we were the kind of terrible country that could think of torturing actual human beings? And if this is a form of torture, why am I voluntarily doing it to myself?

I gave that up and am now rereading my Stephen LaBerge book. He’s truly a wonderful writer, and his bibliography is easy to remember because his three books all have the same title: Lucid Dreaming. I’m reading the one called Lucid Dreaming. It was published in 1985. I have the other two on order, plus two other books on lucid dreaming written by other people.

It’s important to remember as many dreams as possible so you become familiar with your own dreams. This in itself might allow you to realize you’re dreaming—wait, this thing with the giraffe and the shoelace! I’ve had this dream before. Hey, did I say “dream”? Oh, I’m DREAMING!

Then, if you get the hang of directing your dreams, you can enjoy “quality time,” as Erin puts it, with Jason Statham, fly, visit other galaxies, find out just what your subconscious meant by a certain dream, face your fears, talk to God, take a ride in Iron Maiden’s plane, and goodness knows what else.

Stephen LaBerge suggests a method for learning lucid dreaming which is, when one wakes from a dream in the early morning, to go over it mentally until it’s memorized, to tell oneself, “Next time I’m dreaming, I want to remember to recognize I’m dreaming,” or words to that effect, to picture oneself back in the same dream realizing one is dreaming, and to repeat the latter two steps until one falls asleep again.

I also got a pen with a light in it so I can make notes about dreams during the night (without picking up a pen AND turning on a little flashlight). My bed is now surrounded with lucid dreaming instructions, my dream journal, various flashlights, my LED pen, a selection of pencils, my lucid dreaming book, etc. I will stick with this until I get the hang of it. It is my goal to be a fluent lucid dreamer who can direct her dreams.

Erin Pavlina also talks about pre-programming a dream, and I was able to do that the other night. I said, “I would like to have a dream about going to the Zen Center and talking to the co-abbot," and that’s precisely what I dreamed, but I wasn’t lucid during it.