In Defense of Insomnia

It happens in the depths of night, in bed; it is a private thing. When daylight bulges behind the curtains and wakes you, your head aches, your thoughts are desperate, but at least you will not be alone fighting your dragon for the next fifteen hours. It is odd, perhaps even presumptuous to be so burdened with St Michael’s battles while everyone is sleeping away the worries of the former day. Let me be clear: I do not want to wake up at three in the morning and stay awake until five or six, but this has been happening regularly for almost fifteen years now, despite trying nearly every remedy imaginable from sleeping pills (dreadful stuff – they jimmy the soul from the body) to acupuncture, to naturopathy, yoga, qi qong etc., all of which has led me to the conclusion that there is a recalcitrant someone in me who craves these intimate encounters with the dark: the reader.

Understandably the reader needs to read and when the duties of the day separate her from her defining task, she is obliged to burn the midnight oil. She has no qualms about waking you up and has the single-mindedness of a hungry newborn; she is all determination in the dark when your guards have gone off duty. And so I read, from three to five am, indulging her you might think, though this is not exactly the case. I use the reader as much as she uses me. For once I’m stunned awake, I am like a warrior of the most primitive kind, striking down the worries of the world and the smaller tracasseries of my own orbit with a crude planson; it is an endless, no-win battle, not at all like St. Michael’s noble and efficient slaying in fact, and only the reader shows me the route to a truce.

She steers my mind to a story. My bedside table is stacked and lined with books, which I read horizontally, simultaneously; I choose very carefully with Reader, for if the book is too exciting and fun, which recently was the case with The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Diaz), I can forget to fall back asleep entirely. Usually we must compromise to find just that right fit: a book with a pleasing enough story line to reel us in, but one whose syntax or plot twists require steady, rapt attention. It is precisely this salutary mental effort which will tire my mind enough to release its grasp on the rim of the Here and Now and slip down to the land of Nod.

Last night we were ensconced in just the perfect book: Du CÙtÈ de Chez Swan (Proust of course) and read the remarkable opening passage on sleeping and waking, on the sensations of waking in a room and not knowing where you are, or even of knowing who you are. How apropos to read this reflection on the limitrophe state between consciousness and the unconscious! There is a great deal more to say about Proust obviously, and insomnia as well, but I must return to work. I’ve included some photos of the room where I’ve been waking of late; a boudoir chair with a pin cushion back and a rose I picked in the garden.

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