Damned Insomnia: A Story In Varying Tenses (and Points Of View)
Ah. Ughhh. Insomnia.
How I hate the humbling of everyday weaknesses; the reminder of my mortalness through the catching of common public ills, like colds, a "back problem" or...
Insomnia.
Normally I enjoy the gift of sleep like others enjoy the gift of gab (which I don't enjoy, as I hate live interactions with more than my limit of three or four select humans). Yess, sleepy time is a wonderful time, and my dreams are magical...lucid even. But they never came last night, and I must admit the ol' REM phase has been elusive in the past couple of weeks.
Insomnia goes:
1)...creeping into your consciousness about 1:45 a.m., when you have a premonition that you'll be seeing the daylight break today against your will. You nonetheless cram your eyelids together for hours, sometimes so stubbornly that they quiver a little, and maybe even water a bit. 2)...on and on while your eyes remain valiantly sealed, burning. You yearn for the velvety blackness so elusive behind them, to roll yourself up like a mummy in the cool cocoon therein, yet...yet, you can suddenly see your bedroom through your eyelids at 3:12. What the fucuck...? How can this be.
You peer closely around for confirmation of this fact that would be miraculous, if only you cared enough. "Okay...my eyes are closed but I am looking around at, or dreaming I am looking around at, my bedroom, through my eyelids. Yes, that is what is happening: there's my stained-glass nightlight glowing in the corner, there's Emma snoring on the satiny hardwood floor, the air is ghostly and blowing through the fanned sheer curtains, etc., etc., it's all there, it's all real.
I have transparent eyelids. Shit."
You soundly ignore the miracle, and lay on in soothing denial that your mind is just trying to dream. 3)...on until 4:54 a.m., when you realize those aren't busy dreams you've been having for over two hours but thoughts being thunk, and 4)...relentlessly until you start getting really bored at being horizontal in general, around 5:45.
Now the hunger comes, because you have been awake for almost twenty four hours and the body is programmed to need fuel after all, so the hope of catching even ninety minutes of drooling respite before work is something to be negotiated.
I Am The Food
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I accidentally left a ripening banana on the counter before a two-day absence, in the middle of a Toronto heat wave, and on my return today found a fruit fly disco in my kitchen. Which really means the disco was my whole bachelorette, because that's how small my place is. I tossed the blackened, sock-like fruit into the landlord's garden below (it's okay, he encourages that).
I tell you this banana detail because, in my negotiating of sleep vs. insomniatic hunger at 5:45 a.m. in bed, I suddenly began feeling tickling sensations on my neck and face.
The fruit flies were dancing in my bedroom. Specifically, around my head.
5:52 a.m. I don't like killing things, even useless, annoying, insignificant, circling things that can't dance. If I did, I would hang out at humans' nightclubs. So I, zen-like, brushed aside my floating patrons, wishing they were sleep-fairies, wondering why they were swarming my head.
I thought I could see them through my eyelids.
Then I realized a couple were under my blanket. God, no.
In the pale light of humid dawn, I swatted, I crushed, I jerked abruptly around. The words "Dancing At Dawn" snaked crazily through my skull during this frenzy of mine that was the opposite of Zen. Then I remembered that my air conditioner was turned off; the sultry morning was coming on hard on this, day two, of the heatwave. Damn those propagandist energy conservationists for guilting me into "doing my part" for mankind's greed! Somebody make The Gap lay off on their goddam aircon!!
It finally hit me: no wonder the fruit flies were so tribal - I was the only thing left for them to eat! After lying around sweating for hours I was as ripe as the blackened banana. I was their beckoning home.
Fine. But I won't be their mirror ball.
I lay awake scribbling this story down, as I feel I have nothing better to blog about. I decide nothing is negotiable now. I sit straight up in bed. Press the aircon ON. A few tiny disco-dots of squashed frutiflies mark my neck, forehead, and possibly my shin.
I lurch from the damp covers, limiting my dreams to cereal and soymilk.
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