Thoughts and Pajamas

Last night was one of those nights that I had no dreams. Or maybe I just didn’t remember them. (Again.)

I woke up several times last night, but it wasn’t because of the heat like the past weeks. I just woke up for no apparent reason. And then I happily went back to sleep again after checking my clock for the time.

I woke up at 1:36 AM, 2:15 AM, and 4:54 AM.

At that last one, I was in the process of sitting up to adjust the angle of my electric fan when I saw a fleeting image of myself in my karate gi. I studied karate before going to college, you see. My sensei had told me that my strength wasn’t in kata; it was in kicking. I think my being tall helped that. My favorite kick was mawashi-geri, the roundhouse kick.

It was a just a split-second, but I saw it clearly: me in my gi, and already in mid-mawashi-geri.

The sound of my fan crashing to the floor snapped me into full consciousness, and I realized that my foot was in the air, right where the head of my fan should have been.

My roommate Karess was also jolted out of sleep, sitting up in near panic that her laptop would be somehow damaged, making me mutter “Sorry, sorry, sorry!” in a voice that I hoped was somehow soothing.

Fortunately, my fan survived the fall, laptops were far from danger, and Karess and I both fell back asleep almost immediately.

I therefore conclude that maybe dreams involving martial arts—in half-consciousness or no—can be destructive.