March 13: "Falling Asleep," Sense of Wonder, Nobel Prize in Literature

Billy Collins catches 40 winks . . .

Falling Asleep

by:  Billy Collins

Walking backwards

into a dark forest,

I sweep my footprints

out of existence

with a large

weightless branch.

As young kids, we fight sleep.  I think it's because there's just too much to do, too many new things to taste, touch, smell, hear, feel.  In our undeveloped minds, we think that we might miss out on something important if we close our eyes and allow ourselves to check out for a while.

As we become adults, we lose our sense of wonder at the world.  All the little gifts of each and every day become . . . ordinary.  Boring even.  So there is less to stay awake for.  Instead, sleep becomes the unknown frontier, where wonder rules.  Your fingers can turn into elephant trunks.  You can win the Nobel Prize in Literature.  Marry or have sex with your high school crush.  Attend Woodstock.  Fly to the rings of Saturn.  All by walking backwards into that dark forest.

Perhaps that's why sleep becomes so pleasurable was we get older.  It's an escape from the daily pressures of work and family and life.  We venture into the Land of Nod, brush away our footprints, and lose ourselves for a little while.

As I've said in previous posts, sleep and I have never been friends.  We aren't even on a first-name basis.  I don't usually close my eyes until well past midnight.  Most nights, I see 1 a.m.  It's not that I don't enjoy sleep or suffer night terrors.  It's because my monkey brain refuses to stop climbing trees and flinging coconuts and shit at the world.  I go for days on five hours of shut-eye a night, and then my body and mind will close down.  I have no choice but to sleep.

I'm tired tonight.  Really tired.  Perhaps because I've been working on school and work crap since 7:30 this morning.  Or because of Daylight Saving Time this past weekend.  Or the fact that I haven't gotten more than four hours of sleep a night for about two weeks.

Whatever the reason, Saint Marty is ready to close his eyes and accept his Nobel Prize.

June 22: Really Tired, Arthur Rimbaud, "Evening Prayer"

I am really tired this evening after a long week of grading and writing and planning.

I tend to stay up very late at night, and I always get up early in the morning.  That's my life.  Now, getting to bed close to midnight and rising at 4:45 a.m. tends to wear a person down after a while.  After a few weeks, I usually have to just go to bed and sleep for a very long time.

I'm reaching that point, I think.  Maybe not tonight or tomorrow.  Soon.

Saint Marty has a little prayer from Rimbaud for tonight.

Evening Prayer

by:  Arthur Rimbaud

I spend my life sitting - like an angel
in the hands of a barber - a deeply fluted beer mug
in my fist, belly and neck curved,
a Gambier pipe in my teeth, under the air
swelling with impalpable veils of smoke.

Like the warm excrements in an old dovecote,
a thousand dreams burn softly inside me,
and at times my sad heart is like sap-wood bled
on by the dark yellow gold of its sweats.

Then, when I have carefully swallowed my dreams,
I turn, having drunk thirty or forty tankards,
and gather myself together to relieve bitter need:
As sweetly as the Saviour of Hyssops
and of Cedar I piss towards dark skies,
very high and very far;
and receive the approval of the great heliotropes.