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muckefuckIt's been months since the Little Drummer Boy on the 8th floor woke me in the wee hours. Let's hope this was a fluke and not a return to form, yes? I've gotten terribly sensitive to such disturbances as I've grown older and it's not usual for me to spend a half-hour lying awake in bed debating the pros and cons of confronting the noisemakers rather than just putting a pillow over my head and going back to sleep. (Actually, I'm already in the habit of sleeping with a pillow over my head, thanks to my heinous previous set of neighbours.)
Of course, however hard it is to change yourself, it's still almost invariably easier than trying to change other people. So I've been trying to use my Zen to desensitise myself to upsets. At one point, when the drumbeats were coming few and far between, I tried to visualise my mind as the metaphorical reflective pool the great Buddhist masters are always going on about. Each thump was like a stone being tossed it: It sent ripples across the surface without disrupting the deep, clear water underneath.
It didn't really work, but at least it improved my dreams.
Because my sleep was so fitful (perhaps Thai ice coffees at 5:30 p.m. are not a genius idea?), there were a lot of them, they were rather lucid, and the line between sleeping and waking was blurred. Basically, I dreamed a series of those dreams were you "wake up", only to find you're still dreaming, but they felt so convincing that I was trying to find ways to prove they were true. For instance, I knew before going to bed that I had a dime in my pocket, since I gave the rest of my change to a classmate at dinner. In one dream, I found two coins and put them in my pocket, thinking that counting my money later would tell me if the incident had really happened. In a later dream, I found more coins and added them; then, even later, it occurred to me that I wear briefs to bed, so how could put anything in a pocket? (Then, when I really woke up, I thought, What was I thinking? I never wear briefs to bed except when I have or am a houseguest.) And so forth.
In any case, at one point I was standing in backyard of a childhood home. There was a large muddy puddle on the ground (not coincidentally, right where we used to flood the yard with the hose for fun). I realised it was a proxy for my monkey mind and tried to still it, but there was a noisy car idling in the alley. The roaring of its engines became more and more threatening and I realised that it was turning about and preparing to run me over. But I told myself not to fear and not to flee. Fleeing would cause me to wake up in terror and I didn't want that, so I stood there and stared it down as it hurtled toward me. My only regret is that I closed my eyes right before "impact". Whether it drove right through me or melted away just before running me down, I proved to myself that it was all an illusion.
Now if only I could do that in real life!
Of course, however hard it is to change yourself, it's still almost invariably easier than trying to change other people. So I've been trying to use my Zen to desensitise myself to upsets. At one point, when the drumbeats were coming few and far between, I tried to visualise my mind as the metaphorical reflective pool the great Buddhist masters are always going on about. Each thump was like a stone being tossed it: It sent ripples across the surface without disrupting the deep, clear water underneath.
It didn't really work, but at least it improved my dreams.
Because my sleep was so fitful (perhaps Thai ice coffees at 5:30 p.m. are not a genius idea?), there were a lot of them, they were rather lucid, and the line between sleeping and waking was blurred. Basically, I dreamed a series of those dreams were you "wake up", only to find you're still dreaming, but they felt so convincing that I was trying to find ways to prove they were true. For instance, I knew before going to bed that I had a dime in my pocket, since I gave the rest of my change to a classmate at dinner. In one dream, I found two coins and put them in my pocket, thinking that counting my money later would tell me if the incident had really happened. In a later dream, I found more coins and added them; then, even later, it occurred to me that I wear briefs to bed, so how could put anything in a pocket? (Then, when I really woke up, I thought, What was I thinking? I never wear briefs to bed except when I have or am a houseguest.) And so forth.
In any case, at one point I was standing in backyard of a childhood home. There was a large muddy puddle on the ground (not coincidentally, right where we used to flood the yard with the hose for fun). I realised it was a proxy for my monkey mind and tried to still it, but there was a noisy car idling in the alley. The roaring of its engines became more and more threatening and I realised that it was turning about and preparing to run me over. But I told myself not to fear and not to flee. Fleeing would cause me to wake up in terror and I didn't want that, so I stood there and stared it down as it hurtled toward me. My only regret is that I closed my eyes right before "impact". Whether it drove right through me or melted away just before running me down, I proved to myself that it was all an illusion.
Now if only I could do that in real life!
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Did you check the bed for coins?
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After trying to fall asleep for 30 minutes, I finally dressed and just before midnight knocked on the door of the apartment downstairs where talk radio, of all things, had been blaring for hours (who needs to listen to AM radio at high volumes?). I noticed the lights were out in the 1st floor apartment, so I knocked several times until a sheepish 20-something girl answered. She apologized and I went upstairs. But she did not turn down the #$&@^$ radio!
I was too fed up to try again and finally fell asleep. When I left for work at 5:00 a.m. (yes, it's that kind of day), I noticed that the radio was still blaring -- I could hear it clearly in the courtyard though less so in my apartment. I'm assuming she was stoned or something. I've noticed her radio more and more in recent weeks; not quite sure what to do now.
I had actually met her once a few months ago when I knocked on her door one night to inform her that water was leaking down into my bathroom and might be doing so to hers. She was already up because water was pouring through her ceiling in several places. She seemed nice enough, though clearly not at all bright. The first thing I did when discovering the water was to go to the apartments above to find out it someone's tub was overflowing. But that never occurred to her.
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