This is my latest weird thought while sat on the toilet (just now).

I’m sure everyone has a favourite mental state. Perhaps other people are at their happiest when they are deeply asleep, or asleep but dreaming, or thinking hard about a problem and coming up with a solution (the joy of that mental state is undeniable), or having rumpy pumpy, or maybe eating their favourite meal, or feeling drunk but not too drunk (happy ‘I love you all’ drunk).

Happy Drunk photos I recently found on my phone

Although those are all good mental states, for me, my favourite mental state is that place between being awake and being asleep. I love that place. I visit that amazing place shortly before I fall asleep, and shortly before I wake up. I’m in that place at least twice a day (four times if I treat myself to an afternoon nap). I suppose everyone visits the same place as me, just not at the same time or in the exact location, otherwise it would be quite crowded there.

My mind is at its most relaxed when I’m  in that place, yet I’m conscious enough to notice it and appreciate it and blog about it here. My imagination starts to play games when in that place. I see unicorns, multi-coloured goats, chocolate cakes, beautiful seas, fluffy kittens and all sorts of other amazing things. Also, ideas come to me when I’m in that state. I love it.

Picasso was a big fan of that place. He would sleep sitting upright with a spoon in his mouth so he could harness ideas that came to him just as he was nodding off (the idea is that the spoon would fall out and wake him up so that he could scribble down his ideas).

Sometimes, as I am waking up, I try to lengthen the time I am in that wondrous place by avoiding the lure of consciousness. The problem with consciousness is that it leads to clarity and the world loses most of it’s amazing colour and shape that it seemed to have in the in between place. The world is still fairly wondrous, just not quite as much, and in consciousness you need to search harder to find that wonder. In the place between sleep and awake, that wondrousness is just there. It cannot be avoided. Sometimes music plays there. But mostly all sorts of creatures lives there, most of them mythical. I might meet people there with whom I spoke during the day, or people to whom I haven’t spoken to for years. It’s always a lovely place though. It is somewhere where tea parties are had, cup cakes are eaten, and somewhere where Alice would feel utterly at home.

Alice lives between consciousness and sleep

I think I might just go now and have a nap. I feel like a cup of tea and a cup cake with a purple goat and a eight-legged stout.