"Sleep Talk"

“Betition maure ring aug gurr taimon.”

My brother talks in his sleep.

I never know what he's saying, though. I can never glean any meaning from his slurred consonants.

“Raung etra.”

His words are in some ethereal language that falls incoherent on the ears of waking souls.

“Meang aurg nurron egula.”

Maybe it's not his fault, though. Maybe it's mine. I need a little more imagination. I need to be able to connect the dots. I need to be able to infer the Mona Lisa from sparse segments of line, need to be able to sculpt Shakespeare out of garbled and disjointed phonemes. It's my responsibility to give the sleep-talk its meaning.

After all, our brains aren't fed a coherent reality. They're bombarded with a bunch of meaningless action potentials they have to interpret. The action potentials themselves – in their raw and uninterpreted state – are meaningless.

My brother's sleep-talk is like a bunch of raw action potentials, waiting to be interpreted by a brain.

But how can my brain interpret such at three or four am? By then my alertness is detrimentally impaired by the fuzzy haze of sleep. I can't possibly dole out meaning to “raung etra” when I can barely even remember where I am!

Enter: the tape recorder.

On the night of April 28th, I lay in bed, tape-recorder in hand. My finger poised at the record button, I was ready to pounce at his first garbled utterance.

Silence pervaded the spring night. It was hard to believe that such a serene, innocuous silence could ever be punctured by sound – but I knew it would happen sometime. The wait seemed so much longer than usual when my finger was frozen at the red button...

“Berrang mau...”

My heart jumped; I roughly punched at the record button with a plunge of fear.

The syllables echoed towards me. As always, their meaning was hopelessly diffused in the ever-collapsing reverberations of the hall.

But maybe – just maybe – I could give them some profundity in daytime.

* * *

The morning commenced. I spotted the recorder twirled and tangled in the folds of my bedsheet. I eagerly snatched it up; I pressed the rewind button.

Brrzzzhhhh... zzhhh... zhhh... - pop!

It was ready to be heard.

...Whatever it was.

I pushed play. The faint static of recorded silence faded in. Then came the articulated syllables of my brother, fluidly spilling out like a soliloquy in a native tongue.

But to me, it was a soliloquy of nonsense. As always.

I dejectedly turned off the recorder and set it aside. There was no hope; I just didn't have the ability to interpret the sleep-talk. I tried hopelessly to console myself – maybe nobody could interpret his words. Maybe waking souls simply didn't have the faculties to interpret sleep-talk. Maybe his soliloquy bubbled straight from the realm of dreams. Who was I, to think that I could understand it?

It obviously wasn't meant to be heard by the ears of the wakeful. And so I gave up.

* * *

A week or so later, after immersing myself in my own business and turning a deaf ear to the garbled sleep prattle of my brother, I came across a passage in my psychology book that re-ignited my interest. I tried to brusquely push the thought aside, but I of course failed.

My fascination with his case of somniloquy could not be repressed. A million questions sprang to mind. Did his sleep-talk occur during REM or NREM sleep? Was it related to a psychological disorder such as REM sleep behavior disorder, or did it stand alone? And, most of all... what did his sleep-talk mean?

Finally – my concentration broken, my curiosity whet – I left my books splayed on the desk and sought the tape recorder.

Play. ... “Mau niv urr treetah deece...”

Still garbled – as always. Frustrated, I stopped the tape recorder, rewound it, and played it again.

“Niv urr treetah deece ifarr muh...”

Rewind. Play.

“Niv urr treetah deece...”

Rewind, play.

“Niv urr treetah...”

Niv urr. I stopped, my hands frozen on the play button. The chunks of speech he was spewing resembled English words – but with the stresses all mixed up, the pauses all misplaced. If the listener used his or her faculties to correct for such errors... the meaning was evident.

Niv urr. It was a distorted rendition of never. Rewind, play.

“Niv urr treetah...” Never try to...

Rewind, play. “Deece ifarr muh...” Decipher my... Oh, no, no.

Never try to decipher my words. That's what he was saying.

The tape-recorder slipped from my fingers and fell to the floor; the recording sharply stopped at the impact.

* * *

An hour later, I re-entered the room, disgusted with myself for running away so cowardly, for heeding the warning of my brother. I picked the recorder off the floor and rewound the tape again, determined to finish the translation. I would not be dismayed by piddling superstitions or unsubstantiated fears this time.

Rewind. Play.

“Urrtree tahdeecif arr muh...”

Incoherent syllables met my ears yet again. The sleep-talk was utter nonsense. Meaningless babble.

My brother wasn't spewing cryptic admonishes, and he never had been. It had just been my imagination. I had given meaning to something that had none. The sleep-talk was total bunk.

... But that's all of life, isn't it? Reality is but a meaningless collection of shapes and shadows, only assuming identity when we give it such.