Taking a Pounding

Woke up in the early hours of the morning conscious of great trauma. I'd dreamt a death. At high speeds, under high pressure, with a flurry of action and a sudden descent of doom. My own death, I think. My heart was pounding; heart rate up, lips dry, sudden fatigue.

And then I slept the sleep of the righteous for a time.

Fatigue

The brain can't be used in the same way too often. I need a break. And more sleep.

No Need to Count Sheep

I sleep easily. Sometimes, too easily. I use coffee to maintain the fragile equilibrium between the living and the dead. To keep awake, I remind myself, is not to keep a wake.

I can survive on four good hours of sleep. I feel awkward and fatigued if I sleep more than six. Somewhere in between is the golden mean of pillowed fruitfulness.

Sometimes I stay awake, only to realise that I am asleep. Sometimes I wake up, only to find that I have been doing work, and that a complete stranger has written a thousand words.

This post was written while asleep. A sleep.

Sleeping Too Much

Yes, I know it's possible to get too much sleep. Your lifespan and prospects actually go down once you cross the ten-hour mark for sleep sessions. Unfortunately, I've done that two days in a row and am feeling the ill effects. Sigh.

Herbie

My sister recently sent over a cat in a box. Sexless and floppy, with a pale underbelly and a greenish cast, this fellow looked distinctly unappetizing. The wife said, "What is it?" And so, I read the instructions on the box.

It turned out to be a densely compacted and fairly heavy herb cushion in the shape of a cat. According to my sibling, you were supposed to drape it over your eyes to shut out the light, clear your sinuses, and have a good night's sleep.

And that is why I spent the night with a cat draped over my face. I have named him(?) Herbie.

Sleeping Positions III: Down & Out

Sometimes when totally exhausted, I flop out face down and have some marvellous sleep. It's not just anyone who can sleep face-down: you need to have the means of breathing. Fortunately, I have huge nostrils and they always allow me to get enough oxygen even when sprawled on my face.

There is one exception: if the bed is too soft, I find that a not-completely-face-down position is necessary for the continuation of life without oxygen deprivation.

Apart from such considerations, face down and dead to the world is quite a pleasant thing.

Sleeping Positions II: Fearful Asymmetry

I used to sleep flat on my back. I find it hard to tilt and twist my spine; it's funny that my torso should be so averse to torsion. But these days, people say I snore when flat on my back. Heh, it has never troubled me before.

I've seen others curled up in foetal position, like little prawns wrapped in cloth skins. I wonder how this can be comfortable, while uneasily realising that I must have spent quite some time in that position too.

I see advertisements showing mattresses and pillows that let you sleep naturally on your side. That always profoundly upsets me in some atavistic way. Can it be natural for one to sleep on one's side? My pets do that once in a while. But they look more alive sleeping on their bellies. It must be as natural either way.

For chordates who are also vertebrates, it seems odd that one should lie sideways, instead of symmetrically. It seems much more natural to put even stress on your organs, even if the human inside is less symmetrical than the human outside. I fear that when I sleep on my left side, my liver will smack into my heart and make it work harder; when I sleep on my right, I guess it helps gastric drainage, but I always feel that things are hanging over my gall bladder and as-yet-unremoved appendix.

Oh well. I'm sure Hamlet never thought of this when wondering about the sleep of death.

Sleeping Positions I: Suspension

Last night as I dozed off, my last thought (I think) was that I was falling asleep in an oddly familiar and iconic position. I sensed that I was lying with one leg crooked under the knee of the other, rather as if I were in the shape of the number '4'. I didn't think about it again until this evening.

Well, I remembered why that position seemed so familiar. It's an old one, and you can find an image of it here. It's the Hanged Man from the old decks, an image I've commented on before.

Don't take me for some sort of occultist. I just look at symbols and try to unravel their meaning. My sleeping position last night was very natural to me, but it doesn't mean I think of myself as Odin hanging from Yggdrasil or something like that! You might however recall that this grim wanderer was also the master of two ravens.

Morning Unbroken

It's in the wee hours of the morning that I find myself most productive, coaxed through the hardest parts of work by cold air and odd scents. I smell the effluvia of a thousand night-venting factories, redolent of spices and yeast, tobacco and faux-chocolate. I feel the silence, like a comfortable cloak. The bond between keyboard, monitor and me is never as close as it is in the early hours.

The dogs scuffle around outside, momentarily dreaming or disturbed by doggy instincts. A distant clatter causes the cat to prick one ear and then subside into the usual lazy slump. Dim throbs of the early roadworks crews resonate faintly almost beyond consciousness, as they unpick the seams of our daily workways.

I feel the tension in my neck subside. There is less stress, less urgency to produce clever work and perfect sentences. I stretch my stiffened neck muscles and make my uneasy head lighter as I breathe a different air. It's easier to hunt and disable the mosquitoes that seek my blood. It is easier to see the things normally unseen – the things that in another age and place would have been called house-gnomes or other odd excrescences of the universal id.

I finish my chapter summaries for the latest book on globalisation and education. I finish another game of Scramble on Facebook. I finish this and that. I finish, I feel like the finisher I was meant to be. If I were any more Finnish, I'd be Nokia. Or Santa Claus.

And I head to bed before the dawn, feeling very satisfied indeed.

Psalms 126-127: Building The Future

The previous readings from the Songs of Ascents talked about looking upwards. To some extent, that's what the faithful do all the time. But the readings for yesterday and today speak a lot about looking forward once the upward dimension has been acknowledged. Psalm 126, for example, says this:

When the LORD turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream.
Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing: then said they among the heathen, The LORD hath done great things for them.
The LORD hath done great things for us; whereof we are glad.
Turn again our captivity, O LORD, as the streams in the south.
They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.
He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.

It is a song of release from the past; things done of old have had their consequences, but the penance is over and the work can begin. The work is not that of slavery, with no reward save the ending of pain; it is the work that bears fruit and builds for the future.

That theme of building is even stronger in today's reading, the well-loved 127th Psalm, which is a foundational hymn to many:

Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.
It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep.
Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.
As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth.
Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.

The main point here, however, is that progress towards the future is dependent on trust in the blessings of youth. As a more modern translation has it, "Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain," and "He brings sleep to those He loves." There is no point in rising early or toiling late without the understanding that you do it in a secure faith and a good conscience.

I've been blessed with the ability to sleep anywhere, at any time, in any place. Very rarely do I find myself too awake to sleep; and these occasions are certain indicators that whatever is wrong has to do with my own errors. The downside also comes in that when others are talking without an end in sight, I tend to fall asleep as well. As Earthsea author Ursula Le Guin once famously said, "When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep."

Of course, one shouldn't sleep too much; that way lies the defeat of the sluggard. But hoarding one's energies while all other avenues are fruitless is wise.