The Mind Never Sleeps

Or maybe I should say, "the mind at sleep remains active." Last night I had further proof of this, as though any were necessary.

I spend a good deal of energy wrestling with language these days. English, naturally, is an ongoing task, a challenging language that is never really mastered. I'm working on my German, I have two German friends at my condo-building-home and I talk to them everyday. Thai may prove to be my linguistic Waterloo, but I haven't given up. Last night these struggles appeared in my dreams.

At one point, a person in the dream was employing a screwdriver in the manner of a New York subway mugger, which is to say threateningly. The dream was taking place in German and English, and I searched for the German word for screwdriver. What I came up with was "Hupschrauber," but I knew that a Hubschrauber was actually a helicopter.

I considered this through a series of waking and sleeping periods, and finally, in another dream, I realized that a screwdriver in German was a "Schraubenzieher." Upon waking this morning, I confirmed that both of these words had been correctly identified.

So my excuse for sleeping nine or ten hours most nights is that the time is not really wasted. The mind remains active, and the time is rich in recollection and learning. That's my story anyway, and I'm sticking to it.