Middle of the Night Questions


 

Do bumblebees and butterflies dream? And of what?

During the height of Covid-19 lockdown, or is that depth, I dreamed a lot and because it was so unrelated to my life forgot a lot. Now it would seem I dream little but am unable to forget it. Life intrudes on my desire to escape its realities. And it is sometimes hard to know where the real ends or begins.

But then maybe that is always true for artists or the creative. The writers, poets, painters, and dreamers whether they are sleep dreaming or day dreaming. If I went crazy would I know? If I died while sleeping would I know. Would it merely be a seamless migration from one level of being to another?

This is not what I got out of bed in the middle of the night to write. I woke up, sort of, to visit the restroom and my cell phone beeped. It has several different sounds and some I ignore because they are just pings which say someone liked a post or comment. And some are more urgent. Vrbo makes sounds which seem to require my attention at the oddest times. And after a period of quiet it seems to suddenly demand my attention more. People are booking for the holidays. And buying paintings! And my sister is traveling back home. 

I turn on the tablet more to lull myself back to sleep with silly Facebook stuff than catch up with life which can wait to morning. And the screen comes alive in the midst of a communication from the command module to me for a totally innocuous comment (not harmful or offensive) (a word with 6 vowels out of nine letters!) and pulled out of a conversation and ergo taken totally out of context and I haven't a clue what the context is other than the grand dragon seems to believe this is worthy of me being placed on probation again. It is a six word sentence dealing with masks. I make masks, sell masks, wear masks. We are in a pandemic period where we are suppose to wear masks indoors in public.

By now I am totally awake trying to figure out what this sentence is about and why it merits a reprimand. I imagine I am now looking like I must have looked when Dad would demand I wipe that look off my face or he would wipe it off for me. And I am scared because now is not the time to not have Facebook to communicate. Too much is using that platform. Too much going on with the vacation rental, a terminally ill sister, a very active studio, and fall into winter.

I remember once as a teenager not speaking a word in my house, to any member of my family, for almost a month. I barely spoke in school except when asked a direct question. And at home nobody asked anything I couldn't just nod in response. One day my lips stuck together and I vowed to drink more water. Nobody seemed to miss my input. Then it hit me that Facebook wants us all to just shut up. They claim they are a communication platform, but if you look closely they do not want you to communicate. Not verbally. Look at Instagram. Photos only realistically. And FB is icons and Meme's and condemnation of six word sentences and not one a bad word! We are being trained to NOT communicate. I know how my dog feels when I am trying to stop him barking.

Faced with not being able to say another word on a communication platform I got out of bed and came downstairs to pen this epistle before I am silenced. Or was this just a dream? A snippet of nonsense, a fragment of a random thought intruding upon my subconsciousness and trapped between the night and the day? A middle of the night question with no firm place to land in the dawn?

And on that note back to the opening: Do Bumblebees and butterflies dream, and if so, of what?

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