Burpee's says Spring

5:45:22 PM      trackback [] 

Writing, sleeping and insomnia

I used to be much neater before I started writing this blog. Here it is 2:00 in the afternoon – oops, make that 3:00 now – and my bed’s not made, my sink is full of dishes, I haven’t showered. I did spend a couple of hours doing some writing work for a client. Of course it doesn’t help that I didn’t get up until 10 am. I slept in two batches last night: 11:30 until 5:00 and, I dunno, maybe 6:30 or so until 10. Well, at least I got my 8 hours in, which is more than I’ve had the previous few nights.

Not getting sound enough sleep leaves me stiff – my muscles don’t relax enough. Today I keep stretching my jaw out in a way that reminds me of Johnny Depp in the recent movie, “Secret Window.” I saw it last weekend – not very good, really, but Depp was very entertaining. He plays a novelist trying to write in a New England log cabin on a lake, but mostly sleeping on the couch in an old bathrobe. A creepy redneck played by John Turturro shows up at his door saying, “You stole my story.” Now as I wander the house in my jeans and scruffy old sweater, stretching my jaw, I imagine John Turturro showing up at my door. The thought strikes me as hilarious.

In the movie, Depps’ characters’ problem is not inability to sleep but inability to write. I can write but not sleep. It seems there are lots of writers who don’t sleep. I have a book of poems called Acquainted with the Night, a collection of “insomnia poems” that a friend gave me a couple of years ago. At the time, I was sleeping fitfully for several nights in a row then catching up with an occasional 10-hour zonk-out. This went on for months. It was more a result of bad habit than any anxieties. I’d turn out the light, my head would hit the pillow and my brain would turn on. I’d think about how to say things in Spanish, replay movie scenes, edit remembered conversations with better come-backs. Finally I went to see my alt-health practitioner who gave me herbs (passionflower and valerian, mainly) to take for a few nights plus instructions to lay off my afternoon tea and do yoga and relaxation before bed. Guess I need to return to the plan.

Anyway, during my wide-awake break early this morning, I was thinking about the insomnia poem in the most recent New Yorker, “Insomniac” by Galway Kinnell. This poem reminds me of the scenes painted by Ernesto and Kurt that I posted about last week:

Insomniac

 

I raise my head off the pillow and study

the half-frosted windows and the clock

with its reluctant to tumble robotic digits

to check on how the night is proceeding.

By the clock’s green glow and the light

of the last quarter moon the snow

shines up into our bedroom, I see

that the half of the oceanic comforter

apportioned to her side of the bed

lies completely flat. The words

of the shepherd in “Tristan,” “Waste

and the empty sea,” come to me.

Where is she? Sprouting in the furrow

where the comforter overlaps her pillow

is a hank of brown hair—she’s here, sleeping

somewhere down in the dark underneath.

And now in her sleep she rotates herself

a quarter turn—from strewn all unfolded

on her back to bunched in a bulky Z

on her side, with her back to me.

I squirm closer, taking care not to

break into the immensity of her sleep,

and lie absorbing the astounding

quantity of heat a slender body

ovens up around itself, when need be.

Now her slow, purring, sometimes snorish,

perfectly intelligible sleeping sounds

abruptly stop. A leg darts back

and hooks my ankle with its foot

and draws me closer still. Soon

her sleeping sounds resume, telling me,

“Come, press against me, yes, like that,

put your right elbow on my hip bone, perfect,

and your right hand at my breasts, yes, that’s it,

now your left arm, which has become extra,

stow it somewhere out of the way, good.

Entangled with each other so, unsleeping one,

together we will outsleep the night.”

 

—Galway Kinnell

Galway Kinnell (The New Yorker, p. 64, issue Mar. 22, 2004) is the author of thirteen books of poetry, including A New Selected Poems. "Insomniac" copyright ©2004 The Condé Nast Publications.

3:18:34 PM      trackback []