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I have, no
claw (11-15) I think about my son napping, and I am insanely jealous. Here where I'm surrounded by thumbtack heads staring back at me in flat colors. Here where the lights seem so horribly bright in the cube today, and I am so very, very tired. There’s this weight pushing down the middle of my back that only seems to go away when I lean straight back and hang my head over my chair, letting my legs stretch out and somehow pull me slowly down, down, down. I feel myself slipping out of the seat, and I’m somehow powerless to stop the descent without bringing back that heavy feeling on the middle of my back. So I sink. I roll the sleeves on my shirts up on my wrists a bit; one fold, then two. I push the folds above my elbow and then slowly feel them constrict the flow of blood down my arm. I push them back. I am not clever in exhaustion, nor inspired by sleepiness. I simply want to sleep. I want to rest. I could, you know. Right here, within moments of telling myself that it would be ok, just for a little while... But it wouldn’t be. Sleeping at my desk, nodding off at the post? Nah. That wouldn’t fly. So I drink coffee, but apparently it’s only for the motion of hand to mouth, foot to coffeemaker. Whatever is in this cup does not seem to be working for me anymore. I’ve made that mark, that point where yawns seem to go on forever, pushing my mouth farther and farther open like some David Lynch image twisted into a lyric for Mike Patton to sing about over samples of the Kronos Quartet. Oh, to take this moment and transform into a bug. Not for the Kafka-ian metaphors, but for that promised time in the pupae, sleeping silently through the chemistry. To revel in this feeling, this place on the edge of stillness and somehow make it into beauty. Oh, for the ability to make overpowering sleepiness into a full-time vocation, so I could be standing around the watercooler with my office mates Joel Robinson, Van Morrison, Keith Richards, Bob Dylan, the drummer from Blondie, and those guys from Oasis, hoping that we can stand around without working a little bit longer before Jim Morrison (our manager) catches us applying ourselves and not sleeping. And then I find myself slipping, daydreaming that Val Kilmer is whispering "What am I paying you for?" at us, and how apologetic we all are as we slink back to our adjustable chairs in front of our computers and get back to our appointed stretching and figeting.
My eye itches. When I scratch it, it closes. When it closes, it doesn’t quickly re-open. And when one of them is closed, the other feels left out, and the next thing you know I am jerking my head up from where it has fallen to rest on my shirt... I must eat candy, I must walk briskly to the vending machine, I must slap drumbeats on my thighs, I must drink more water so that I will have to get up and pee. I must.. crawl into my filing cabinet, insert myself in the accordion file marked "comatose" and close the heavy door until I hear the latch go "cli-click."
I remember school classes where there was no pause, no hesitation. If I was sleepy in a classroom where I knew that I would be able to consult the book for the information I needed later , I would simply put my head on the desk, and I would zonk. I take a moment and dwell on some of the desks that I've slept on in my days, until I realize that all this thinking of zonking and comas and file cabinets just makes my eyes feel even heavier...
I must read my book, I must fill my mind with thought. What am I reading now? -- oh yes, Virginia Woolf -- Mrs. Dalloway. However, this novel is one of those where Virginia attacks her readers with armies of semicolons, accursed semicolons, each bringing me to a mental pause, a momentary rest, a stop in the motion.. "In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June" It is beautiful work, but the constant winking of the punctuation is trancing and hypnotic -- I have to put it down now or else I might just catch myself... Bing!
Email, sweet email -- yes! Saved by interoffice chatter. Something meaningful like where we all want to go and drink beer while we watch the Florida gators play Florida state, or if anyone knows where the hole punch is... I mouseclick open the envelope, and someone has sent me this:
So I'm sitting there staring into this thing like Roddy Piper in They Live with the special sunglasses on, realizing that the fine woman with the weird eyes who helped me escape the aliens is quietly talking into her watch... and I quietly slip into delerium. But I smile and have a little chuckle with myself because what the aliens don't know is that I am going to have to drive home like this. That's right, I will have to eventually navigate a car in this condition. The alien kids in the yellow schoolbus that I always seem to follow home after work will not have enough time to realize what is happening as sleeping at the wheel, I careen my car into them and push them off the road, saving all of humanity. My plan seems sound, and in my mind I can hear the Majority Leader of the Senate (there is no president, kiddies) giving me a congratulatory speech for killing a busload of eight year olds, but the more that the gray haze around the little black dot begins to shrink, the more I know that I am going to lose. Even if I make it to the meeting at two, even if my work comes back from the editors with tons of marks on it, even if I were to pour this glass of water on my head, I have reached my nadir, that edge of ridiculous exhaustion, and I am going to fall asleep at any moment now. It’s inevitable, unavoidable. I am done resisting. I welcome it.
I press my hands tightly against my closed eyes, shutting out all the light except for those purple afterimages that appear when you have been looking at lights for a long time and then quickly rub your eyes... Almost instantly there is a phone call and some paperwork needs to be filed. The editor comes back with short, easy changes and asks how the baby is. And somehow I am lucent, awake, and clear of mind while I field the calls and brag about the boy. And then I am working on the papers, checking, filing, printing.. I am suddenly appearing as bright and cheery, clear-headed and full of energy even though I am drained of all my possible reserves. I am thinking about cleaning the bathroom that needs cleaning when I get home, and playing with the baby, and The West Wing, and everything... but it's all a sham. The weight under my eyes is still there. Looming. Once this surge of energy falls off, it will be there again, creeping up on me.
And then inside my head, a plan forms... I will begin to cry, quietly at first, but steadily gaining in volume. I will whip my head back and forth while I cry, and wave my arms around. Between sniffles I will scream at the top of my lungs and arch my back. And I will keep it up until someone beautiful rocks me back and forth and then wraps me in a blanket while I fall off to a sleep so deep that others will envy it, others will wish for the time when they could sleep like that. Oh, but I'm afraid you know too much now,
SLEEP SLEEP |
