Apparently, deer go to sleep facing due north.
As usual, I’m faffing about looking up arcane wisdom on the internet when I’m supposed to be blogging. This time, it’s bed orientation. Self-appointed experts blathering on about questionable eastern philosophies - I think I might have just overloaded Google, there are so many search results.
Yesterday, I shoved our bed round 90 degrees because we’re planning a renovation and I thought it might be wise to check if I can sleep facing in that direction before I let some Germans with big hammers remove my supporting walls (none of that was a euphemism).
It does mean that the bed is now freestanding in the middle of the room. I know centre-stage beds are fashionable in some quarters, but it feels a bit like lying on a sacrifical slab.
As darkness falls, I sense shadowy figures in pointy hats and flowing robes performing uninhibited dance routines while holding incense and worried chickens. It didn’t help when The Husband felt it necessary to climb into the new floating bed and bellow “bring out the gang rapists!” before falling into a Nightnurse-induced slumber.
Oddly enough, though, some of the internet clap-trap about feng shui and lucid dreaming and the sleep alignment of woodland creatures is ringing bells.
Last night, I was aligned north-south. According to virtual practitioners of the dark arts, this is perfect for lucid dreaming. (But not lurid dreaming, sadly.)
I assume ‘lucid’ in this context only means you can remember it afterwards, because what I dreamt about was a right load of old psycho-crud: I was chased (blah), I lost the kids (blah, blah), I wandered about with everyone telling me how wonderful I was (I quite liked that one). But nothing that would send Jung back to the drawing board.
So what is the point of ‘lucid dreaming’? If my subconscious was dredging up long-hidden traumas that blight my life (“so that’s why I’m terrified of ham”) or ideas for Rowling-esque literary masterpieces or the cure for lumbago, I could get on board. But when it’s just more of the same old babble that I live with inside my head all day long, (“where are the kids? oh there” / “wasp, wasp, there’s a wasp! Oh, it’s gone” / “do cucumbers have vitamins?”), a silent night comes as something of a relief.