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Wednesday, May 29, 2019

Sleep Sickness

Meant to take my walk this morning on the next beach in line, Matahari Terbit, but I was just too damn tired. More than tired, really. Unworldly tired, rather like when I had mononucleosis. I got up after a long night's sleep, made breakfast, watched a bit of the news on TV, got dressed, thought I'd lie down for just a minute, and straightaway feel asleep. 

What is it? The long illness I've had, and still have? Blood pressure medications? Neuropathic medications? Antihistamines? All of the above?

But then again I have to admit that this is  not new. Long before I came down with this fungal plague, I noted that I was unusually tired, and on many occasions experienced the same pattern in the morning. The only difference is that now it is multiplied ten times over and the tiredness does not go away when I renew my day, as it tended to do in the past. 

What a mess. I keep waiting to live again, and become more and more bedridden, or house-ridden anyway. Life has become a joyless drudgery. 

Now I've forced myself out at least to Starbucks, falling far short of a walk on the beach, and I'm sitting here in my chair feeling like I'm about to fall asleep.  

How long? Where is the end? What is the cure? 

I can only wait, and rue the passing, unused days. 

In the meantime, whilst I've been waiting to live, I have come upon an uncommonly engaging collection of short stories--Exhalation, by Ted Chiang. The book was listed in my 'Recommendations for You' section of my Amazon page and had, as I found on further reading, been the recipient of some fairly extravagant praise. So I went ahead and purchased the book for my iPad and very soon saw that the praise was entirely justified. I'm three stories in and already regretting that I've consumed so much so quickly, as that means I will reach the last page of the final story all the more quickly and will have to return, still thirsty, to the desert otherwise known as contemporary American literature. But I suppose that perfect gems like this are uncommon in any age or literature, and will therefore content myself with the nourishment derived from these intriguing pages while my body sleeps away the days.

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