...To Make a Long Story Short...

"Am I asleep?" 

Is what the bearded bicyclist asked me as I walked back to my car this past Sunday night from the Super Bowl party I had attended. 

At least I think he was asking me.  He spoke loud enough for me to hear, seemingly directing the question towards me, as I was the only other person out on the street.  Still, given his probable status as one of the thousands of homeless in the Los Angeles area - his bicycle overloaded with provisions one would need to survive sans a residence in the city - and the fact that he did not pause on his bicycle to wait for a response, continuing riding and talking on his way to where ever it is he was going, means that he may not have been completely aware of my existence. Posing the question to someone outside of anyone's - save his - ability to perceive.   

I avoided answering the bearded bicyclist partially as a natural - and unfortunate - urban defense mechanism; to skip all but the most superficial interactions with homeless. Not out of fear of being hurt, homeless are rarely physically violent. More out of concern for finding myself again, at some late hour pushing a man in a wheelchair two city blocks uphill, discussing a war I wasn't around for, on the way to a "Disabled Vet Bus Pick-up" even at the time I knew didn't exist. Or something similar to that.  

But mostly I didn't answer because I did not know what answer to give. "Am I asleep?" is such an surreal question. It's almost an impossible for someone else to answer.  If you can not tell if you are sleeping then how can you trust the person your asking is real and not dreamed up? And what response, if any, did the bearded bicyclist desire from me? 

"No, you are not asleep."

The brutal truth, to further cement the reality of the situation. The probable, unforgiving reality of a life where everything you own travels with you at all times and the simple act of staying warm is a nightly battle.  Where shmucks in cars forced to stop on freeway off ramps will signal their lack of desire to help by pretending they don't see you; or walk past you on the street corner and remember - just as they spot you - that urgent bit of news they need to converse with their walking companion or someone over the phone about.  These type of things REALLY do happen to you.  

"Yes, you are asleep."

The comforting lie, to both speaker and receiver. Furthering the delusion that one might wake up from this life, whatever life that may be, and find it somehow more beautifully designed, with witty, articulate people, or filled with soft beds and warm food. Like out of a movie or book, where everything means something and it all wraps up nicely in the end. But it doesn't in real life.  At least not always.

Sometimes there are lose ends. Sometimes you turn over a new leaf to find that the backside of the leaf is exactly the same as the front. People may still be jerks even after you get to know them. 

"Am I asleep?"

I'm not entirely sure why that phrase resonated with me. But it did.  I thought about it the whole way home.  The fractal pattern of its significance getting more complex the longer I focused on it. 

Is just the desire to give things meaning sufficient to actually give them meaning?

When we sleep we enter a world all unto our self. Even though the world is one completely existing within our mind (and thus subject to our complete control on some level we still tend to take a passive role in it; reacting to the events that play out. In that way can it be similar to the real world?

While true we do not have omnipotent control over all things in the real world, it does not mean that control does not exist.  And when it does exist do we always take it?  With so much going on so quickly these days it can be easy to slip into the pattern of extinguishing fires rather than preventing them. Let our lives run us. Have the waking world parallel our sleeping one. 

"I'm too tired."

"I'll save it for next weekend."

"I just need to unwind, this week was stressful."

"I just don't have enough time."

Do I not have the time or do I allow myself to be too busy by not making the time to do the things that are really important to me?   The world, and all the people in it, will take as much as we let them. To them, they are each taking a small sip, but too many sips may leave the water glass empty when it comes around. 

Maybe there is no hidden meaning behind the random phrase shouted at me by a bearded bicyclist on the way to my car. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't stop from time to time and ask the question:

Do I take control of how the events in my life will play out before they take control of me?

Or am I asleep?