i didn’t sleep much last night, or rather, this morning. i watched movies to pass the hours but found myself wide awake at 3:30 in the morning, dreading the 6:30 alarm. even though the tv was at a moderate volume, my children were sleeping soundly as children do when mother is near. for a time, i watched my son’s even breathing and occasional squirming to find a comfortable spot. and i chuckled softly when my daughter laughed gently in her sleep. hopefully her pleasant dreams don’t elude her when she’s my age.
i finally started to sink into a restless half-sleep near 4 am. behind my closed eyes, i was drifting in the lingering residue of eva luna, a book i’ve read more times than i can recall, always “forgetting” the plot and ending so that each revisit will surprise, appall, and engage me.
wakeful nightdreaming of the myriad familiar characters, and especially melesio, whose lives are floating in those pages. i get lost in stories and when i close my books, think of restless beings trapped in the confines of pages and covers who are only permitted to exist through my eyes and mind when open. their phrases become my own and their mannerisms find their way into my comportment.
i started my morning with a visit to a gas station where a very tall, very effeminate cashier with the name tag “Gem” gave me unnecessary attitude when i asked where the soup-at-hands were. i felt the need to disarm him right away with a cheerful response. to meet each new person everyday with immediate defenses must be exhausting for Gem. he immediately reminded me of my favorite character in eva luna, that tortured character who by day is one person and by night, herself. and in my sleep deprived delirium, entertained fanciful notions of the glamorous (in the deceptive sense of the word) and tortured life a being of such duality must live. a soul who finds itself in a vessel not befitting its intrinsic need for a comfortable physical home.
differences between consciousness and sleep, story and life, truth and fiction, all take flight at once.
and i’m lectured on the banes of insomnia. i would like to slap whoever’s idea it was to make the days start early. what’s the point of the discoveries of fire and electricity if we have to be up during the day? am i rubbing humanity’s fur the wrong way because i’m nocturnal? is it unnatural that my body has never been able to sway to the rhythm of day since i was a teenager? i’ve been reading Insomniac (Gayle Greene) and she’s right, insomnia is of almost no interest to those without it, but to those who bear it, it’s of grave importance. clearly, insomniacs are able to hold jobs, produce at work, function at home, but it takes a most careful and constant negotiation with our own bodies and minds to maintain stasis.
