To Sleep Perchance

“Sleep is pain's easiest salve, and doth fulfill all offices of death, except to kill.”
--John Dunne

Sleep, last night, was a thing not to be had by any means, and the salve of which the poet speaks remained obstinately out of the question.

Methought I heard a voice cry, ‘Sleep no more!

Macbeth doth murder sleep

Murdered, yes--not, in my particular case, by MacBeth (as far as I know), yet murdered still. Alone in my bed (except for two dogs and my wife), I suffered for long hours the death of sleep, the untended wound of wakefulness. The last time I looked at the clock, the hands showed 3:30. But that means nothing, other than to mark the last time I judged there to be any sense in looking.

What was it that had so completely chased sleep from my life? Was it the fact that MS had un-jointed all my bones the night before and I was still aching from it--feet, ankles, legs, knees, shoulders, neck? But that should have made me tired, one would think. It must be concluded, therefore, that being tired does not necessarily lead to sleeping.

Was my mind too crowded with thought? Never. It has never before happened.

Perhaps I was care worn, or perhaps my mind was full of plans for the coming day.

Nope, this is not likely at all. Without the application of strenuous effort, enough anyway to raise a sweat, my mind remains pretty much a blank slate--so purely so, in fact, that it exasperates other people. Take my wife for instance. Please.

An old Rodney Dangerfield joke is enough for my brain to grapple with, let alone the cares of the world and all the best laid plans of mice and men.

Seriously though, take my wife--a woman with whom I have rarely spoken because there are too many mental concerns and designs and conversations blocking the channels of peripheral noise (i.e. my voice). Honestly, I have sat with her on the front porch many a time and said many a word without making, for all intents and purposes, a solitary sound. I have watched and seen and felt the envelopment of her entire person in its own private counsel.

The only other time this happens is when she watches a movie. She does not just watch, but her spirit itself enters the TV set and lives among the characters there. One might as well ask Mel Gibson or Brad Pitt, or whomever the actor might be, whether he could interrupt her for a moment in order that she might at least briefly attend to something in the outside world.

Well, don't you ever think? she says.

No, it tends to keep me awake.

Nonetheless, if one finds himself still awake for too long after his head hits the pillow, one does begin to think in spite of his best efforts not to. In my case this has nothing to do with plans for tomorrow, chores to be done, things to be remembered, grand plans and designs--No, quite the contrary, I find myself ruminating in circles over a movie, for instance, that I did not understand (still without arriving at any answers, mind you). Who exactly was Little Dorritt related to? What was her part in this big mystery that took seven episodes to sort itself out? My God I've watched channel 10 for seven weeks now, hanging upon the elusive answer to this mystery, and now the show is over and I still don't know what happened!

From Little Dorritt, my mind wanders to a post I will write about sleeping. This becomes very long and involved and profound. It becomes so comprehensive in fact that it plays at the very edge of revelation where the meaning of the universe and human existence are concerned. But I remember not a bit of it the next day. It was merely a rumor, spread by exhaustion.

I remember then that someone at church said I have a Doppelganger running around the city. A double. This in itself was not surprising, for I had already heard of him many times in the past. But who is he? That is the question that angles for my attention. What does he want? What is he doing right now--at 2, at 3, at 4 in the morning? Sleeping? And if one double sleeps, does he sleep for both? Is it somehow impossible for both to be absent from consciousness at one and the same time? What would happen? Would it be anything like The Day the Earth Stood Still.

OH GAD! Now I had done it. Instantly my mind fixes upon this silly movie, on Keanu Reeves, on the conviction that I could have played the part of the main character just as well in my sleep. If only I could sleep. Was Keanu asleep during the filming of this movie? It's a serious question.

I would guess in hindsight that it was somewhere after 4 a.m. when I finally slept.

I woke up at 6:30, half of my body underneath the Labrador, the other half under my wife and stepson. I think I dreamed that I was a puppy. Breast feeding. In debtors' prison. On the day the earth stood still.

"To sleep, perchance to dream-
ay, there's the rub."

Allah Adalah Kasih

Last night our Muslim house guest decided to pray. This in itself is not surprising, for he prays five times every day. It is a rule, you see. What was different last night was not that he decided to pray, but that he decided to pray very loudly, and moreover decided to do so until 1 or 2 in the morning. I'm not quite sure when it stopped, because at some point along the way I buried my head under the blankets and the pillow, and then the Labrador, forever the kind-hearted sort, laid himself on top.

I guess the idea would be that it's never too late at night to talk to God, and that is a good and honorable way of thinking. Still, it occurs to me that God, who needs no sleep, is sacrificing little in listening, whereas we human beings are weak vessels and must eventually nod off for our own good health even while there is so much remaining to be praised and adored and generally hollered over.

Now maybe, just maybe, a soothing sort of chanting and shouting would be bearable, and yet our particular Muslim's voice is not made for lullabies. The sad truth is--and no fault of his own--that his vocal chords and lungs have been constructed in such a way--praise Allah--that the resulting intonation resembles more closely that of the adult cow, which in prayer sounds as if it is being internally tormented in some manner, perhaps by a peptic disorder, a stomach ulcer.

This is how we know that God's ways are truly not our ways, His thoughts above ours--for apparently he finds these tortured groanings pleasing to the ear.

I conclude therefore that if I were God, I would have slept last night like a baby.

Be thou perfect, as your father in heaven is perfect.

Under the circumstances, this seems perfectly good advice.

The Christians, of course, have another take on this prayer thing. It goes like this:

"And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words.

"Therefore do not be like them. For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him."

Now that I can sleep to. To be perfectly honest, I know of no better place on earth for the quick cat nap to be had than on the pew during sermon at church.