{"id":7712,"date":"2016-01-30T12:04:31","date_gmt":"2016-01-30T01:04:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.wordpress.com\/?p=7712"},"modified":"2016-01-30T12:04:31","modified_gmt":"2016-01-30T01:04:31","slug":"insomnia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/?p=7712","title":{"rendered":"Insomnia"},"content":{"rendered":"

A writing exercise. Describe something never before described.<\/em><\/p>\n

Someone at work or play. Or trying to sleep.<\/em><\/p>\n

Insomnia.\u00a0 A Chekhovian professor in A Boring Story<\/em>, which incidentally isn\u2019t boring, suffered from it.\u00a0 He says:<\/p>\n

“If I were asked: ‘What is now the chief and fundamental fact of your existence?’, I would reply:\u00a0 ‘Insomnia.’ ”<\/p>\n

And for the next 28 lines the professor describes his nights when he doesn\u2019t have the right to be awake.<\/p>\n

Yes, insomnia has been described before.\u00a0However, there\u2019s no insomnia like one\u2019s own.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Why does it take me so long to fall asleep now I\u2019m in the second half of my life? Chekhov\u2019s fictional professor goes to bed every night at midnight and wakes at one o\u2019clock. And that\u2019s it. That\u2019s all the sleep he gets. The rest of the night he paces and reads and waits for the cock\u2019s crow. Here in my bedroom it\u2019s presently 12.30am and I\u2019m thinking of the professor. Two hours I\u2019ve been in this bed. My mind is busy, buzzing even, anything but tired, yet my body is weak and exhausted. Yesterday was hot, and the heat lingers. My feet are too warm, puffed up; I\u2019ve kicked off the quilt and even the sheet.<\/p>\n

At 10.30 when I lay down, my window was open wide, but so was the neighbours\u2019. They had guests, and their games and laughter and loud voices carried across the night air into my room. An hour and a half had passed before the guests departed and all went quiet next door. Now, despite another half an hour of a fair silence, I\u2019m still awake. The night breeze picks up. In the next bedroom, the bed empty for now, the blind on the open window blows in and falls back with the gusts, bang bang bang, as its plastic base rod hits the window frame. It’s too hot, no point shutting it, the man who will sleep in that empty bed will only open it when he finally comes home. Minutes later, he does. I hear his feet gingerly treading on creaky floorboards as he comes down the hall, puts his keys in his room, then makes his way to the bathroom and back again. Far off in the distance, leftover fireworks from New Year\u2019s Eve illegally explode every ten to fifteen minutes. In the emptiness of the town they sound much closer, like gunshots. Across the street someone walks a dog past the fence of the government flats where another dog picks up the scent and barks out a repetitive warning. The walking dog responds for as long as its adversary is in sight, the barking echoing in the tunnel of the street. Outside my room all at last is silent, but the bathroom light has been left on and is shining under my door. I can\u2019t ignore it. I get up and turn it off. It\u2019s now 1.30.<\/p>\n

\u2018Not to sleep at night means to be conscious every minute that you are abnormal, and that is why I wait impatiently for the morning and the day, when I have the right not to sleep.\u2019
\nA Boring Story<\/em>, Anton Chekhov<\/p>\n

At 6.30am I wake to the sound of creaking floorboards, the shower running, doors opening and shutting as the man from the next bedroom gets ready for work. I rise and prepare for a two-hour journey to another town to visit an aunt. I can\u2019t cancel her; she’s 88. I\u2019m a zombie, but fortunately I won’t be the driver. Sitting up in the front seat of the car, I can sleep.<\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A writing exercise. Describe something never before described. Someone at work or play. Or trying to sleep. Insomnia.\u00a0 A Chekhovian professor in A Boring Story, which incidentally isn\u2019t boring, suffered from it.\u00a0 He says: “If I were asked: ‘What is now the chief and fundamental fact of your existence?’, I would reply:\u00a0 ‘Insomnia.’ ” And … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Insomnia”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1737,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,832],"tags":[828,829,830,831,2,8,21,270],"class_list":["post-7712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-photos","category-writing-exercises","tag-a-boring-story","tag-anton-chekhov","tag-description","tag-insomnia","tag-literature","tag-photos-2","tag-postaday","tag-writing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}