sandman and morpheus

*yawn* i just woke up from a night of weird dreams and hourly interrupted sleep. hmm. strange, though. i don't really feel tired or disoriented. in fact, i was able to rest quite well, in spite of the eerily disjointed dreams.

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"The Sand-man was a story from 1817 written by E. T. Hoffmann. He also wrote the Nutcracker. The narrator's mother explains that as a child she explained she would say the Sand-man is come to her children and it meant: "...you are sleepy and can't keep your eyes open, as if somebody had put sand in them." An old woman in the story paints a more ferocious picture: "Oh! he's a wicked man, who comes to little children when they won't go to bed and throws handfuls of sand in their eyes, so that they jump out of their heads all bloody; and he puts them into a bag and takes them to the half-moon as food for his little ones; and they sit there in the nest and have hooked beaks like owls, and they pick naughty little boys' and girls' eyes out with them." The childhood image of the Sand-man is mingled in the narrator's mind with reality and the figure of a character named Coppelius in the psychological tale.

Since then the Sandman has become a childhood superstition passed down through the generations. He carries a bag of sand which he uses to sprinkle in the eyes, mostly of children, and put someone to sleep. The grit or sand one wakes with in the morning in the corner of their eye is explained to come from the sand he brings. There is an expression that to tell someone the Sandman's coming means they're getting sleepy or will be sleepy soon."
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Morpheus was the god of dreams in Greek mythology. According to some ancient sources - such as the Roman poet Ovid - he was the son of Hypnos, the god of Sleep. Morpheus briefly appears in Ovid's Metamorphoses:

"King Sleep was father of a thousand sons - indeed a tribe - and of them all, the one he chose was Morpheus, who had such skill in miming any human form at will. No other Dream can match his artistry in counterfeiting men: their voice, their gait, their face - their moods; and, too, he imitates
their dress precisely and the words they use most frequently. But he mimes only men..."

Ovid therefore suggests that Morpheus only sends images of humans in dreams or visions, while his brothers Phobetor and Phantasos are in charge of depicting dream images of animals and inanimate objects. Together these three sons of Sleep - Morpheus, Phobetor, and Phantasos - rule the realm of dreams.
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the sandman and morpheus have been doing their jobs pretty well lately. for the past nights, i'd fall asleep almost as soon as my head hits the pillow (that does not mean, though, that i sleep early). they must also sprinkle an additional helping of stardust and sand over me. i've been having so many dreams, too! and they come in so many different "flavors" - funny, sad, eerie/creepy, happy, believable, out of this world, etc.

are they wicked? or are they anticipated guests? hmm. i don't know. perhaps the sandman and morpheus are just like my dreams. sometimes dreaded.. sometimes welcomed with open arms. and i never can tell which is which until i fall helplessly into a deep, deep sleep.