“After all it is probably only insomnia,” Hemingway wrote in A Clean, Well Lighted Place. “Many must have it.” But that fails to acknowledge the fatigue of going to work day after day after day on only an hour or two of sleep, combined with the hangover effect of benadryl, benzodiazapenes or whatever other desperate measure you’ve adopted to escape from yourself–if only for a little while (I’m trying to sleep–and failing–with benadryl these days). Who, if anyone, can remain at their intellectual and physical peak while facing month after month, year after year, of this?
Escape. That, on at least one level, is what sleep is–an escape from yourself and the cares of the world. Hemingway talked of reading as a way of allowing his creative self to recharge itself “from the springs that fed it.” Sleep serves that purpose, also, unless–like me–what sleep you achieve is filled with a disjointed sense of time, distance and place. Sometimes I awake from a brief and restless sleep not knowing where and when I am: I’m still married, or still in school, or I’ve just lost the love of my life–and those are the good awakenings. Sometimes I awake unsure of who I actually am.
I don’t sleep, I dream
I’ll settle for a cup of coffee, but you know what I really need
Leave me to lay, but touch me deep,
I don’t sleep, I dream
I’ll settle for a cup of coffee, but you know what I really need*
And reading. Whether from lack of sleep or simply anxiety, I can’t seem to concentrate–even on the books and writers that I love. In some ways I don’t see the words these days; it all becomes a sort of blur. Even magazines give me trouble, light reading being not so light anymore.
I will persevere, I suppose, if not exactly endure. I will still pursue sleep, hoping to awake with a sense of energy and a vision of what I want to accomplish. Somehow, I’ll make it through another day. And this evening, when I’m home, I’ll try once more to lose myself in prose and poetry. I will try once more…to read. And sleep.
