No Sleep Blues

I am lying on the bed, in the dark, trying to sleep. As usual, the very act of trying ensures that sleep will not come. There is a truism that should have been a proverb. It is certainly more true than "a watched pot never boils," which I have proven to be false by exhaustive study (a study initially inspired by the desire to prove the statement bogus, but now become a habit disguised as a Zen meditation).

I think about how the phrasing should be to achieve optimum effect and use. "Desired sleep never comes," won't work. "Desired" just doesn't flow and "come" now has irritatingly smarmy overtones. If I use "wanted" for "desire" it sounds like an FBI poster. Perhaps it is the multiple syllables in those words that is throwing off the rythm. Perhaps I should turn the phrasing around. "You can't sleep when you want to," is properly terse, but sounds like it should be in a song called "Safety Sleep."

That turns my mind to songs about sleep. The first that comes to mind is also the last. It turns into an earworm and for the rest of the night all my thoughts will be played to the happy, bouncing, jig-time, "No Sleep Blues".

They tell me sleeping's a gas
I want to lay down
But I'm sorry I woke ya
I really got the no sleep blues

"Cracks rack the window," says The Incredible String Band, but pain racks me. It's not even big pain, it's all sorts of little inconsequential pains that in union have found strength, like the ache of arthritis in the joints of both index fingers, the crackling, popping pain of my badly-healed shoulder broken years ago in a motorcycle accident, like the the throb of a healing cut on my arm, like the soreness of an odd bump that appeared today on my wrist and that I can't seem to stop touching ...

... and it's not just pains but sensations, like the feel of my toenails against the sheet, the way my t-shirt bunches and yanks against my body, the way the folds of flesh left after I lost a lot of weight adhere to each other, the feeling of finding the single crumb in the bed and feeling like the princess and the pea, the slight tightness in my neck and coppery feeling in my sinuses that tells me that there is a headache on the way.

Sound is part of it too. I hear the drip of the remnants of rain in the metal gutter, the scuttle of paws or claws in the attic (there's a mouse playing football), the constant off and on of the toilet down the hall with a leaky valve, a dog barks down the street, a baby turns over in her sleep in the next room, a car goes by, a train hoots in the distance, the peepers, the furnace ... it all adds up.

I can deal with the snoring, the rasping liquid gurgle as the air rattles the soft palate like a pea in a police whistle, from huge horselike snorts to faint kitty-purr rumbles. I can deal with that. (Do you just have to snore?) Over it all, louder in emotion than all else in volume, are the silences. On sleepless nights like this it is the silences which destroy me. I lie in the gloom and try to think of the proper metaphor.

It's like being in an airplane with the hum of jets and fans simultaneously annoying but providing audible feedback that everything is working properly, that I am safe. Then suddenly the sound stops. My hearing becomes focused. I listen for things to start again and as the silence goes on I start to panic, to plan, to extrapolate. Adrenaline kicks-in. Where I was merely alert before, now I am hyper-alert ... waiting for the sound of engines, waiting for the yellow masks to drop.

I hover on the edge of consciousness. Through the open window I hear the wind hissing through the branches, I watch the shadows of their dance cast by the streetlight gently oscillate on the ceiling and I hear the rumble of her snores as she lies next to me. I start to sink into a kind of trance, when ...

The snores stop. Suddenly, in mid-snore they stop and it is such a wrong silence that I am immediately stark-raving awake. I am so awake that my muscle fibres are quivering as they wonder if they need to be ready for a fight or flight response.

I listen for breathing. I hear none. I poke her ... nothing. I shake her once ... twice, and then at last there is an implosive inhalation as her soft palate unseals with almost a glottal click, it pops open, the air rushes through with a snore so loud that it wakes her up.

She looks over at me and glares. Her skin retains the memory of my poking and shaking her. I have woken her. I am the enemy.

"You were snoring," I tell her. It is untrue, but I have to keep the information simple so she can parse it, decide that I meant well, and go back to sleep. I want her to sleep. One of us should be functional in the morning.

The adrenaline is still perking through my system. The sharpness that it brings will keep me awake for a while. (Her snoring stops. I wake her up.) The flavor of danger mixes with my blood as the extrapolation begins and I think of everything that can go wrong.

This stopping of breathing, this apnea, is why she's tired all the time, why she sleeps so much every day, it helps intensify depression, it leads to stroke, it's why ... Oh God ... it is so much "why". I know this because, when I realized that sleep was slipping away from me, I hung my own elephant trunk mask beside the bed and turned off the pump.

All of this goes through my head as semi-consciously my brain tries to figure out why all that adrenaline is floating about and making trouble. Unwanted extrapolations both logical and not, twisted in some cases by love, fear, even selfishness, thoughts start weaving and intertwining like a knot of snakes. In rapid succession I wonder how I'd deal with things if she had a stroke. How she would. (Her snoring stops. I wake her up) How she'd deal with lack of control. How could she stand it if her hands were incapable of controlling a brush or a pencil. Would she finally get treatment. Why can't I persuade her to get treatment now, so that the chance is more remote.

Once started, this reaction perpetuates itsself. The thoughts weave and hiss and feed on themselves releasing more adrenaline and more worry and the knot of snakes gets larger and angrier. I twitch and ache as I realize that I can't tell her about these thoughts without bitterness, without the edge created by my insomnia and the guilt (Her snoring stops. I wake her up.) I feel for nearly killing my family by falling asleep at the wheel so many years ago and fear that she might put herself in the same ... and I know that she won't do anything about it because I've asked her for years to do something about it and she never ...

And because it looms so large in the dark, it becomes the repository of all problems, all the petty annoyances, the irritating quirks, the phobias, all of them get jammed into the shadow of that silence. That fearful cessation of breath.

Slowly, I try to back out of it. These are irrational fears, I tell myself. I just need to watch her and be careful and hope for the best. I can't make her decisions for her. She'll be okay.

My head is buzzing as the snakes skither over one another. The hissing in my ears, the pressure at the back of my skull, the throb of an approaching headache all factor into my next actions.

I get out of bed. I go to the bathroom and piss. I wash my hands, then I wash my face to calm myself to cool down. I rub some Tiger Balm on my temples and forehead to help quell the headache and pop some acetaminophen. I go to the kitchen, butter a slice of bread and eat it as I lean against the counter in my underwear. I look at the clock ... it is 3:23 am. I wonder if I should wait until it is 3:33 before going back to bed. Would that be a good omen? Then I dismiss the thought since there are four clocks in the kitchen and each shows a different time. I briefly think about averaging them, but decide that it's too much work.

I walk back to the bedroom carefully trying to avoid squeaking boards in the hallway outside the room where my daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter sleep. The baby makes a sound in her sleep as I pass and it lifts my spirit a bit.

I switch on the light by the bed, fumble for my reading glasses and the book that I'm not really enjoying. Three chapters later and it is 4:07.

I turn out the light. Outside the sky is getting lighter. (And the dawn comes sneaking up when it thinks I'm not looking.) Her snoring stops. I wake her up. I get up, get dressed. I make a mug of espresso and take it into my office. I plug in my headphones open WinAmp and select "The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion" by the Incredible String Band. I listen to "No Sleep Blues".

And the dawn comes sneaking up
When it thinks I'm not looking;
I am starting to grieve, man,
I used to know but now I believe, man.
They tell me sleep is a gas,
and if I want to lay down,
But I'm sorry I woke you,
I mean I've got the no sleep blues.

Then I start to write.