Sunday reading; or, Vila 1, Insomnia 0

An excellent feature in this week’s New York Times Magazine about a subject I happen to be exceptionally well versed in: insomnia.  The article is particularly noteworthy because I actually read it in the morning, having recently emerged from a debilitating and months-long bout with the condition.

Insomnia is, as the author notes, a form of performance anxiety, much like stagefright, writer’s block, or the one that Pfizer has made countless millions rescuing porn-addled men from.  It is also a distinctly post-industrial ailment, one that strives for an ideal state of sleep that likely never existed.  My favourite excerpt from the article offers the requisite historical perspective:

[A. Roger] Ekirch’s 2005 book, “At Day’s Close,” described just how frenetic night in preindustrial times was. People slept, or tried to, in poorly insulated buildings that let in the weather and noise. Livestock huffed and mewled and stank just outside – if not inside. Generally, you slept beside a chamber pot of your own excrement, staggering across the room every few hours to keep your fire alive. With physical health comparatively poor, night was when people simmered most acutely in their discomfort. In 1750, one writer described London between the hours of 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. as a ghastly encampment of “sick and lame people meditating and languishing on their several disorders, and praying for daylight.”

Well, so much for the good old days.

The article goes on to question the efficacy of sleeping pills, whose hypnotic properties have recently become a subject of intense debate.  I suspect that this is because the latest generation of pills, known as “Z-drugs,” have been marketed as an entirely new class of pharmaceutical when in fact they function in exactly the same way your mother’s (or grandmother’s) benzodiazepines did: that is, they don’t act directly on the mechanics of sleep, but indirectly on the anxiety that conspires to prevent it.  Essentially, they’re downers, except without the cool cultural references and the bad rep.  (Rock and Roll Doctor, you’re on the air!  C’mon, anyone?)

In any case, I’m pleased to confess that they worked a charm on me.  

I’ve long held the view that there are two kinds of humans: upper-people and downer-people.  Upper-people respond to coffee, Coke, coke, and speed, while downer-people have a penchant for Valium, hashish, alcohol, and opiates.  As always, there are exceptions that prove the rule: nicotine, for example, which is a stimulant that is experienced by the user as a depressant.  Generally speaking, though, people seem to need either to be sped up or slowed down, and I fall squarely into the latter camp.

Drugs aside, I am now trying to learn how to live life as a recovering insomniac, which is infinitely harder than it looks.  For starters, when are you supposed to write?  In the absence of late nights there is evening, which isn’t nearly the same, and these bright daylight hours that still feel foreign and strange.  I haven’t found my daily rhythm yet, as my recent blogging output shows, but even so life feels a thousand times better than it did just a few weeks ago, when it transpired almost entirely in the dark.  Not good, and especially not on the cusp of a long, Montreal winter that will be spent huffing the quiet and still air of delightful studies.

(Snorts.)  I bet Milton slept like a fucking baby.   

5:03 AM

Why can’t I fucking sleep? I am tired beyond words, but here I lie, writhing and twitching like a hooked trout. A hooked trout that has to be up in four hours.

Caffeine, fuck your god, your goat, and your mother.

Okay, Vila, don’t panic, and do not under any circumstances look at the clock. You are resting, which they say is almost as good as sleeping. Rest, Vila. You remember how to rest, don’t you? Sure you do.

Okay, I’m resting. Actually, it does feel kind of nice. Ah, and here come the cats, who will lie down beside me and purr quietly. Come on, cats, lie down. I said, lie down. No, Ivan, please don’t attack my toes. Ivan, NO! Oh, for fuck’s sake…

Great, I’m not resting any more. I am, however, jonesing for a cigarette. Fine. I’ll get up and have a cigarette. And check my email.

Oh look, it’s an email from James, who isn’t sleeping either. Write back to him while you smoke your cigarette, and be sure to whine. Done. Send. Hey, maybe he’ll write back again? Hmm… (Drumming fingers.) He isn’t writing back. Fuck, you’re asleep, aren’t you, James? Bastard!

Fine. Finish your cigarette and go back to bed, Vila. Maybe it’ll work this time? I know, I’ll fantasize about the cute bartender at the Café. That way, when I drift off to sleep I’ll have fabulous sex dreams. Yes, that is exactly what I should do.

Okay, there he is. Damn, he’s cute. Okay, now get rid of his clothes and give him a couple of tattoos. Perfect. Now, will it be fucking or a leisurely blow job? Hmm. Fucking will tire you out faster… Right, fucking it is, then. Mmm. Okay, so this is where I start drifting off, right? Right?

Nope, still awake. Except now, I’m awake and horny. Shit. Okay, stay where you are, Vila—just reach under the covers and grab your vibrator, which is all plugged in and ready to go…

Um, no it’s not. You put it away when you cleaned the apartment, you dumb bitch. What the fuck did you do that for? Now, you have to get out of bed, turn on the light, walk across the room, open a drawer, retrieve the vibrator, find the extension cord, plug in the vibrator, turn out the light, and get back into bed, by which time you’ll be bolt awake and not even in the ballpark of horny anymore.

Okay, fine. Don’t think about the bartender. In fact, don’t think about anything at all. Just let yourself be tired. Ah. There. Hey, I think I’m resting again. Excellent. Oh yeah, just don’t forget to respond to that email before you leave for work. (Blinks.) FUCK!! You thought about something! Stop it!

Ah shit, the sun’s coming up. Don’t look at the clock. I said, DO NOT LOOK AT THE CLOCK…

7:16 AM

(Sighs.) I told you not to look at the clock.

The day after the Great Purge

• Go to bank—check
• Buy toilet paper—check
• Pick up dry cleaning—check
• Renew library books—check
• Catch up on work emails—check
• Do dishes—check
• Clean bathroom—check
• Do laundry—check
• Clean cat litter—check
• Take out garbage—check
• Buy beer—Ah, shit…

If I had remembered to buy beer, I’d be drinking one right now. Damn, when was the last time I had a drink? Thursday, I guess. Wow, I haven’t been out since Thursday. I should go out tomorrow.

Fuck, the apartment looks good, though. Well done, Vila. Shame you don’t have any beer to celebrate your accomplishment with. Hmm, there is that whiskey that James brought over when you were sick… Ah, but I don’t feel like whiskey. I feel like beer.

I wonder how James is? He’s probably hurtling through his dissertation like a complete madman. Or playing internet chess. Hey, I bet he has beer! It’s probably too late too call, though. Yeah, it is.

Oh look, Frank just posted a comment. What the hell is he doing up so late? I quite liked his post about industrial music. I should comment on it. I keep meaning to comment on people’s blogs more, but then I forget and it feels like the moment has passed. The story of my life, that.

Hey, I should go vote for Bob’s blog again. He should so win a Canadian blog award. If he does, it’ll be like one of us winning something. “And the winner is… the smoking, insomniac slacker from Montreal for Best Blog!” Go, Bob!

Next year, I will definitely nominate g-pi. I wonder if we’ll have met by then? We really should all go to a YULblog meeting together. We could be like Bob’s trashy entourage. (Giggles.)

Ohmigod, did K. really ask me tonight if insomnia was contagious? (Laughs.) Man, he’s really gotta lay off the weed. It’s too bad we didn’t get to hook up for coffee today. I’ve been such a flake lately. I hope he understands.

Damn, it’s late. I think I’ll take a bath.

Eight things about insomnia

1. It’s extraordinarily quiet.
2. Cats like it.
3. The phone doesn’t ring.
4. It’s better with cable.
5. You find remarkable things on the internet.
6. You always get enough alone time.
7. It is a space to write in.
8. Tomorrow feels a million miles away.

Late

My mother called tonight, with the news that my brother is in the hospital. It is impossible to know what happened, but as she tells it, he had been severely beaten and required five stitches to close up a wound around his right eye. She wept hysterically as she told me this, and vowed to seek revenge.

It is impossible to know what happened, except that it only ever gets worse.

I consider the possibilities. Did he attack someone first, believing them to be a threat? Or did someone beat him up for the hell of it, without provocation? Or, did something else entirely happen to him, which my mother paranoiacally interpreted as an act of violence? I wonder how he makes sense of whatever did occur, and if he is afraid.

I called my father immediately afterward, knowing that he has already given up. He moves to Sarnia on Monday, where he will attempt to salvage some sense of peace from the last years of his life. This is what he wanted to talk about tonight—what might still be good, not his unrecognisably damaged son.

I force myself to think about what’s good. Last night with James. Today with Arit. An email from Matthew. A phone call from D. Ivan in my lap. Simone waiting her turn. The Arcade Fire CD. Montreal in summer. Dawn breaking.