My bed, being naked and alone

 *

My bed, being naked and alone

I know I wrote about my bed before.

 And I know there is some risk in writing about it again, of committing the writer's cardinal sin: repetition.

But, you know, I'll go on. I won't read what I wrote before, I'll plough on, because it gives me such release, such catharsis, to tell you how it is.

 I delay going to bed, I don't want to lie there. I know why. It's because it's unmanly to seek refuge in sleep; men stay on their feet and fight until their very tendons collapse. 

Then, when the day has truly ended when it doesn't seem embarrassing to go to bed, I go. I undress. 

It`s strange how when you undress you become naked but now because you have spent so much of your life clothed your nakedness seems alien and stranger than when you are wearing clothes. So I don't spend long looking at myself naked for this reason- I find the sight disconcerting, perhaps even shameful, though I wouldn't  be committing a crime in front of the mirror. I wonder if Californians ever feel the same, but I somehow doubt it. I am sure it is feeling located in the strange alleyways of my Scottish background, and the aftermath of Calvinism.

 I make sure the room is perfectly black. I have double curtains and I pull them tight together so no chink of light can enter. Then I get inside that blue blanket which is quite unbelievably soft, a new born baby could not be more kindly swaddled.

There you can see the leafy pillow: this is where my head goes, a watch beside it. I can`t live without time. The thought of waking and not knowing what time it is is as horrific as it would be for me to be dropped into some distant Chinese city, all hateful concrete blocks and street signs incomprehensible -a sense of panic would overcome me.

Then I close my eyes, then it comes in an silent wave or like a light being switched off- so rapid that you feel nothing at all, a slight of hand. Or...or it does not come and I lie like an idiot, cheated. Come here, come! Oh come here, sleep! Oh come!

I cheated myself by presuming that I might deserve to enter the dusk woods. It feels like nothing so much as being stood up. Affronted.

*

Sleep is like music, if it is good or bad, I mean of course, music that catches you completely- you are physically moved by it, your heart beats differently, your moods rise and fall, it plays with aspirations and doubts. Some say that music can make you a better person but I find that sentimental, far too optimistic.

.

I think we all know that life is hell, really, but most think it rather bad manners to state that too openly. It's like that experience when you go for a meal in a restaurant and the food and service are lousy, but only small children are given license to say, this really isn't great is it! as the others look awkwardly to the floor. But sometimes you are so pissed off that you have to say something.

 

*

My sleep

*

Boats, unknown artist, bought on West End Lane 25 years ago

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, and 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 myself vulnerable to attack, my body unwilled, corpse-like, down there. Part of what makes that thought disturbing is, I confess, that it has a whispering allure, as at times I do indeed wish I could rise from my body and see myself my own form, dead, spent through.

That isn't a constant desire, but can rise when life is wretched. I suppose such trains of thought should be controlled as they might lead to rather unconstructive attitudes to life's travails.

One thing about sleep is that although it's a physical necessity, you can't force it: it has to come voluntarily.  It's as if there are are two of you. There is one that declares it's bed time. This one has to make it as easy for the other part of you, a younger, occasionally rebellious part, to concede to sleep. Sometimes the younger part gives up easily. But if they aren't cooperative you can't force them.

You lie, probably a sprung or foam mattress covered by a sheet of cotton, with one or two further items of raised padding, called pillows, to support your head. Then, there is a blanket or duvet. And there you are passive within cloth with, ideally, only your head or one arm protruding from that envelopment.

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

If you start thinking about girls in black stockings and negligees or some other sex thing then it is better if it is a memory of a successful encounter than an ambition. The memory can reassure that the world is benign, but the ambition will excite and render sleep impossible as you lie, hopeless, speculating about how you might contrive an apparently chance meeting outside a supermarket and where that encounter might lead. 

But if that process, that embarkation, is overlong and you're hanging around for ages it is sensible to give up, to return to the state of will and rise from the bed. You can iron shirts or arrange your postage stamp collection, perform some quiet, monotonous but ultimately purposeful task. 

Myself, I have arranged all my bookshelves according to colour of the spines. There is something especially pleasing about the row of black books. 

The sleep I want is dense,  rapid asphyxiation.  I want to be taken into a landscape by Poussin. I want serpentine paths weaving through forests of giant beeches and a lazy fisherman sleeping by a brook.  I want distant mountains and grand stillness broken only by the wisps of smoke from a dying campfire. I want dark red brown shadows and chrome green and flashes of scarlet toga and cerulean blue sky and cartoon clouds and the occasional satyr, playing a woody melody.

 I want lostness, dreamland, a place without or decision or shame.

*

Read to the Albuquerque Creatives, 5 April, 2021 and Metro Detroit Writing Workshop, 7 April, 2021

*