Hello, my name is Mireille and I am an insomniac. Such a cliché you may say, but wait till I tell you who greeted me one night while I was fighting my way to sleep.
I was tired and had to wake up early the next morning. It was already too late to hope for a decent rest, but I thought I should get as much sleep as I could get, even if it was only for a couple of hours.
As I struggled, I remembered what a friend of mine had told me once about relaxing one's eyelids in order to go to sleep and so I did, I relaxed them and waited endlessly to fall asleep, but it just wouldn't work.
I tried to think about what people do to go to sleep, and after some pondering, I remembered the oldest trick in the book, and that is how I decided to count the sheep!
I closed my eyes one more time (eyelids relaxed), and lavishly planted the prairie in my imagination with the greenest and freshest of lawns. I put a door frame in the middle of the prairie and stood by it. The sheep started coming, and I started counting.
I had counted around 300 sheep when I remembered a billboard next to the office where I used to work at the time that encourages Lebanese to use the Arabic language and I realized I had been counting in French. I told the sheep to go back from where they came from and started the count again, this time using Arabic numbers.
Having counted yet another batch or 300 or so sheep, I decided that I need a way that enables me to identify my sheep if I should like to count them again another night, so I told the sheep to back away again and I labeled them each with a sort of marathon costume with a number, and when I was through, I counted yet again 300 or so sheep before I realized the labels were in Latin numbers!!! Horror of horrors!!!
"Back away sheep!"
I relabeled the sheep in Arabic numbers and made sure to count them in Arabic too this time.
Another batch of 300 had been counted one more time before I reckoned that the stable they were going in to only had a door frame, no walls and nothing to keep my sheep from straying or to keep a wolf from snatching one of them. I decided to place a bell around each sheep's neck and started counting again...Do I really need to tell you that I made - yet again - the counting in French mistake? I am sure you would rather be spared!
Before I decided to go to sleep, I had been watching the David Letterman show, and I think it is fairly understandable what had happened next. The bells around the sheep's necks were tolling and tolling, which gave me an awful headache, and hallucination at this point is perfectly justifiable...The sheep with their marathon labels (in Arabic!) and their bells around their necks changed their heads! Yes, their heads were replaced by David Letterman's head laughing at me!!!! Just imagine, or can you??
The other night, I couldn't sleep either, but I was determined not to count the sheep, understandably if you will. Instead, I recalled what another friend had advised me and I thought I should go with her opinion this time. She had told me I should decide what I would like to dream about and that will make me drift effortlessly to sleep in order to see the dream I longed to glimpse.
And since I had a feeling of heaviness over me that night, I decided I would like to dream of something light and floating in a way. The first thought that came to my mind was flying, but then I decided against it because it felt like I needed to be doing some sort of effort to fly, and I was tired. I then thought of being in a room full of feathers, but considered floating on a beautiful lake in a cave before I finally opted for the lake with the feathers spread in it.
Yes I had decided! This is what I want to dream about tonight! I want to float in that lake and be surrounded by feathers on the surface of the water!
Such a beautiful dream I am about to have, I thought as I relaxed my eyelids and chased the last sheep from my mind. Such beautiful dreams... oh wait, the feathers, where will they come from? From birds! Innocent Birds!!! But hunting is prohibited in Lebanon!!! Come here hunter! Police, quick! Arrest this man for he had broken the law and hurt innocent, innocent fragile birds!!! Police.... I called while floating in the lake of guilt and tumultuous sleep...
