Tag: sleep

don’t let it break your heart

Cyanide and Happiness, a daily webcomic
Cyanide & Happiness pt 1 @ Explosm.net
Cyanide and Happiness, a daily webcomic
Cyanide & Happiness pt 2 @ Explosm.net

A time-suck directory of 80’s era music videos on YouTube.

Now that I’m unemployed, I never know what time it is. My watch battery ran out three or four weeks ago, and I never bothered replacing it. The money can be better used elsewhere. I leave the house early enough to guarantee I’ll arrive at interviews ahead of time and when planning trips outside of the house for other ventures, I rely on that strange social habit wherein all strangers must answer when asked the time. Even at home, I’ll be sorting through job advertisements or photographs taken during the day and only realize it’s three in the morning because my friends in Japan pop up on messenger. Like now. Ouch. Yesterday I was worse, getting home at four a.m. and going to bed close to eight. This sleep thing the kids talk about – I’m considering trying it, you know, for the novelty.

Silly Austrian scientists suggest that sharing a bed with someone temporarily reduces men’s brain power.

oderint dum metuant (let them hate, provided that they fear)


anima/animus
Originally uploaded by sucitta.

Waving from the road to dreaming, I fell into bed and didn’t catch the last thing Brian said to me. I heard “the nightly practicing for death” but that couldn’t have been it. I think I was asleep before he left. Those words were just my own brain haranguing me.

video: emilie simon – flowers

Sleep felt suffocating but required. I haven’t been very good at it lately. Instead it’s middle of the night and I can’t sleep. I’ve signed off-line, I’ve curled in my bed under the covers, book in hand, but I can’t read. Instead I catch myself unable to focus, to concentrate. My eyes scan a page twice before I give up and finally lay it down. I get up, I stretch into a coat, leave my apartment for the hall, go up a floor, and climb the ladder upstairs, breaking the lock on the trapdoor if I have to. (I bring a knife for this in my pocket). I stand on the cold black gravel until my body protests, then I leave. I climb down the ladder, put the trapdoor in place, and go back to bed. It doesn’t help. I don’t know why I do it. There’s just an essential need for escape, for change.

video: emilie simon – live in concert

Middle of the night and there’s a man next to me, tangled around me long and warm. I pause, hold myself still while I try to conceive of who the hell that could be. Yesterday kicks in, leads me to understand it’s my friend, that my heart may beat again, that my nails may sheathe. Middle of the night and there’s no roof here, no grand cascade of jeweled pillows, no ferret curled up on the floor. Instead of dark, the sheets are white, they smell like home, like him. His hair tickles a little and I carefully brush it aside. I don’t want to wake him. I would not miss this for the world. In fact, I know that’s the sacrifice. Tomorrow will burn me, tomorrow real life will begin again. A door opens and six close, pulled so by the wake of wind that’s blowing through our actions as he moves in his sleep and pulls me close to him.

Today I received a warning letter from Flickr, informing me that my Flickr PRO account will expire on Tuesday, April 18.
I had to read it twice, because it pained me to think it was so soon spring again.

sky question observe place fact


silo tall cherry lake
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

My sleep is crumbling, indifference mixing with a dying anticipation. I expect a signal interrupt. I wake on the hour, mental suitcase in my hand. That phone is going to ring. It makes me nervous, every sound carving the quiet of my room. My body is weary unto bones, aches and heart rate jouncing at the slightest provocation. I stretch and it feels like I’m under water, I have to push against air to move. At my desk is not so bad. I sit, I type.

Chris slept over twice this week to help me sleep, to offer what comfort he can. Exhaustion’s been claiming me in waves, foam flecked gravity sinking my head to the mattress, but I recoil from company now while at the same time require it. A body gives me an anchor, reminds me that unconsciousness is a gift, not only a tiresome chore. There’s no one else I can ask to stay. Chris is getting better. A fragility still underlies everything, but his heart has weathered what it needed to. It is a weight lifted and, underneath my fatigue collapse, I am glad for it. Part of me considers his fever broken.

I’m hoping for a teacher soon, a new skill to capture my attention away from myself and my silences. I’ve been catching myself crying, strange moments when I put my hand to my face and discover my cheek is wet. I want someone to talk to who has the background to understand, who can coax from me what I need to say. I think I may have found one but she’s far away. I’ve been left alone so long I’m not certain of words in person anymore. Alastair helps. We’ve closed our eyes, taken each others hands, and walked through the crusting scabs of break-up to a place where he can talk to me now. I miss him.