I just had the weirdest instance of a dream within a dream (within a dream). I planned a nap into my evening today, just before my aunt was going to give me a Calculus lesson online (newfangled technologies!). I mistakenly gave myself only an hour to sleep before waking up, being woken up, or otherwise discovering that I had somehow fallen out of my bed and the sound of my shins breaking didn’t wake me up. My shins are lousy. Anyway, it takes me about half an hour to fall asleep. For the first ten minutes, I’m usually huddling under the blankets in some random position, trying to find out where I have both sources of oxygen and excessive warmth. This is a very scientific process. The second ten minutes, I have usually forsaken this glorious location in favor of something that is quieter because, as I have unfortunately discovered, I can hear people through my walls, doors, and window. I also think I hear the radio whenever it’s turned off. Maybe a hundred years ago, an alarm clock died in this very room, and its ghost is haunting me in the present. Or I’m just going a little batshit. Either way. The third stage is a very tricky stage. I have usually fallen asleep at this point, but I wake myself up, thinking I only have five minutes. This is a poor adaptation on my part, and this is the reason that I will never be a successful bear. Because if there are five minutes? I either oversleep or count down to when my alarm goes off. This is where our story begins:

Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

— A Dream Within A Dream, by Edgar Allan Poe:

The first dream

What I noticed first is that I had an iPhone. And I thought this was especially remarkable iPhones are exceedingly wonderful. Not this one. As I was trying to find the website my aunt sent me (even in my dreams, I am exceedingly schedule-oriented. DAMN YOU BRAIN!), I noticed that there was some clapping in the other room. The setting, as I later discovered, was an elongated, elegant version of my house, and I was hanging out in the kitchen, where in the place of bananas and bowls of strange gloopy substances that will soon be assembled into any number of awesome dishes, were well-dressed people, all of whom were Asian. I don’t know quite how this happened

Anyway, I soon realized that whatever browser I was using had way too many tabs open. This is a constant problem with the way I go through my RSS feeds. I basically open freaking everything, and then over the next thirty minutes, read as many posts as I can wtihout Firefox going, “OK, forty tabs was crossing the line, but I’m not doing this three-hundred-and-one crap.” Apparently, this doesn’t work in my dreams either. While I’m trying to find this tab, a diplomat comes over with his assistant, who keeps trying to take some black package from me and got really pissed off when I wouldn’t hand it to her, and says, “The president wants to see you!” This would elate any one who wanted to shake hands with Hu Jintao. I, unfortunately, am quite content with shaking hands with Yao Ming.

Every time he came over, his offer kept getting better and better: “You’re invited to the banquet”, “You can sit at the president’s table!”, “WE SAVED YOU A SEAT BY THE PRESIDENT!”, “GOD DAMMIT, HURRY UP. YOU’RE THE PRESIDENT OF CHINA, AND OH GOD, THERE ARE NUKES, AND I THINK LASSIE’S WAITING OUTSIDE BECAUSE SOMEONE FELL IN A DITCH!” (this one didn’t happen, but I’m working off of a natural progression here). Then, just when I thought I found it, some app came up with a map of a country called “Surina” which had a capital of “Riman” or something like that. Not at all like “Suriname” and “Paramaibo,” oh heavens no.Then I got to change the color of the country — between white and red anyway — and I think at one point, it asked if I wanted to bookmark this page. Then, I transitioned into my second dream.

The second dream

I was running through god knows what (AKA Blanton) with my friend, trying to find my room so I could, again, get to the site my aunt set up. This Blanton of my dreams is a strange, strange world, not unlike a meatpacking plant. In fact, I think that’s what it was. And in the midst of all this running around, I noticed that the building had seven floors, and every time I tried to take the elevator up, I ntoiced that it was subdivided into two compartments, one for the elevator operator (1950, people, get your tickets!) and one for … the elevator toilet. I remember staring at it somewhat strangely before running up to the seventh floor (Blanton only has six floors) and realizing I DON’T ACTUALLY LIVE HERE, so I ran down to the sixth floor (which, in Blanton, is called the “Blattic” and has two big study rooms and rows and rows of study nooks) and had the same dilemma. I couldn’t actually remember what floor I lived on, and then I thought, “A-ha! I’m dreaming! So if I wake up, I’ll make it to my room in time for the lesson!” Enter, dream three.

The third dream

This was the shortest of all. And it was rather like the ending of A Christmas Carol because I think I actually said:

“I haven’t missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of course they can. Hallo, my fine fellow!”

—A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens

Exactly like that.

I woke up in a room that was almost like my room, except I found that when I imagined certain things about my room, they appeared in front of me, which is quite unlike how things happen in real life. For example, the roaring fireplace? WHERE IS IT? I don’t have one! I’m contemplating burning this stash of napkins we have for some sort of residual warmth. Although the fire and resulting dampening of everything in my room — especially the expensive textbooks and my napkin stash — and would be an unfortunate side effect.

So now there’s this imaginary study nook in this five feet between my bed and my closet that are much smaller in real life. Try two feet. Try two feet on a gnome measurement scale. It had all these swively bits and a mirror and I think my artist’s figure was serenely hanging from one of the platforms. Then, I muddle my way around things and get to my computer, turn it on, and then I have the epiphany, “Holy crap, I’m still dreaming.”

When I finally wake up, I realize that my aunt’s calling me because I’ve missed thirty-five minutes of the lesson, I keep saying “OK, bye” to her even though the conversation isn’t over and “Yes” in a few place before I fully understood what she was saying. Like “When should we set up the make-up lesson?” “Yes.” Oh, and I tried to microwave my Indian food in the refrigerator.

So please, everybody get a lot of sleep tonight. As for me, I think I’m going to stay up late and not be so neurotic about NaNoWriMo. Because honestly? It’s a terrible idea to have a month of “literary” abandon in the same month as, I don’t know, many many tests and preparations for the Calculus test and final (nine days apart, no less) that will ultimately decide my college career? Also I think one of my character just became a hermaphrodite BECAUSE I WROTE HER IN AS A MAN. Are you happy, November? Yeah, I thought so.