My sleep

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Bed

This is from my old place. I had been sleeping in this room for exactly a year

The room is like a cell. I strongly sense how arbitrary it is that I'm here rather than any other room.* 

In fact, since I left my parents house over thirty years ago, I have felt this about where I live: the immense arbitrariness of where I am. Leaving home can be an exile or an escape, or just what you must do as a mature person. But home, by definition, is necessarily a place that can't feel arbitrary. 

I believe these feelings of rootlessness are common among the children of immigrants. Their parents made a choice to move. But the children they have in the new country are neither truly of the new country nor of the country of their parents. The children feel detached from the country they are growing up in, but are not really part of the countries of their parents either. They're in a cultural limbo. Sometimes such children are referred to as Two Culture Kids. They are often the offspring of military or missionary families.

 I think I unconsciously chose the role of landscape painter because that way I could examine and insist on, my presence in the world. 

My Sleep

I wanted to write about my sleep, about what might be going on there, because I haven't had a dream for a long time, not for years, and i guess that might be interpreted as the death or the dying of my unconscious mind. Perhaps, you might argue, I've evolved into this super- conscient being, whose mental workings have no mystery. But the decisions i daily  make or fail to make suggest you would be wrong.

I also wanted to tell you about my bed, but then I started to think about how it would be to see a photograph of myself sleeping and how creepy that would be. To see myself lying asleep would be to see someone vulnerable to attack, their body unwilled, corpse like. Part of what makes that thought appalling is, I confess, that it has a glassy appeal as at times I do indeed wish I could rise out of my own being and see myself a corpse, spent through. That isn't a constant feeling, but can come when life seems wretched. But such trains of thought should be controlled as they may lead to rather unconstructive attitudes to life's problems 

One thing about sleep although its a physical necessity, you can't force it, it has to be voluntary.  The are are two of you, one that declares its bed time. He has to make it as easy for the other part  of you, a younger part, wilful and strange, to concede, to sleep. Sometimes the other part is very easy and goes to sleep. But if they aren't accepting you can't force it.

You choose where to lie, probably a strung or foam padding covered by a sheet of cotton, with one or two further items of raised padding to support your head called pillows.Then, there is a blanket or some sort of cover and you assume a position lying, covered by cloth. Ideally only you head or one arm pokes out of that envelopment.

You're in there, your head rests on the pillow, then you close your eyes and try to ease from your thoughts letting any conflictuous moments from the day float away, and you push away also any hopes or aspirations so you are humble, desire free, and your passage into sleep can proceed without rupture. 

If you think about a girl or some sexy thing then it is better if it is a memory of a successful encounter than a ambition, or you will become quite hopeless thinking about how you might contrive an apparently chance meeting outside the tube stop and where that encounter might lead.

But if that process, that embarkation is overlong and you are still waiting for sleep after a time it is better to return to the state of will and rise,  do ironing or arrange your postage stamp collection, some quiet monotonous task. Myself, have arranged all my bookshelves according to colour of book spine. 

The sleep I want is first  a dense, heavy, almost asphyxiating.  I want to be taken by a landscape by Poussin. I want serpentine paths passing giant oaks and a lazy fisherman sleeping, i want farl green forest and a stillness broken only by a wisp of smoke from a dying campfire.

  I want to be free of the need to make choices, to accept everything. I don't want to know that I might return, I want vastness, lostness , a place without or decision or shame.

This photo was taken about six months ago before I moved. 

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My bed

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Where I sleep

Sleep 

This is where I lie down and try to sleep. 

I don't like lying there trying to sleep. I don't like thinking about the day and watching thoughts accumulate. I don't like thinking about the day that was or the day to come and what it might mean. These thoughts so often bring anxieties. I just want to fall rapidly into unconsciousness, plunging into a soft abyss.

Recently, I've been waking up early in the mornings. Then, I  try to go back to sleep. Sometimes I manage. I don't want to get up very early because when I do I feel an emptiness.

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There is another photo of my bed that I'll publish another day. It's less classical.  I may do a series about sleep and going to bed. It's a massively unexplored subject, considering how much of our life is spent doing it.

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