Monday, September 17, 2018

Sleep...within reach!

When I was asked why I wrote this, this was my reply:
" In the words of Anthony Scalia, "I hate to write but I love having written." "
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Sleep...within reach!

Have you ever wondered about how you sleep…or better yet can you remember at what point you fell asleep last night?  Personally, I’ve had many experiences falling asleep; from the instant crash from being tired to the hum-drum lackadaisical mind wondering nothingness to the fantasy world of wishful thinking you know will never happen.  The tossing and turning on the other hand, I think, is shared by most of us at one time or another. 
It’s not usually the  subject of conversation but sleep is something we all need else we will be subject to its consequences; mental abilities, mood swings, decision making and your entire creative processes…even your eating habits!  Well I’m not going to get into any of those progressions for the thought occurred to me that after reading a segment of early American literature that the process of falling asleep hasn’t changed at all for us humans. 

One of America’s first fiction writers, Charles Brockden Brown[1], has one of his title characters, Edgar Huntley[2], describes every detail about sleep:

I have said that I slept.  My memory assures me of this; it informs me of the previous circumstances of laying aside my clothes, of placing the light upon a chair within reach of my pillow, of throwing myself upon the bed and of gazing on the rays of the moon reflected on the wall and almost obscured by those of the candle.  I remember my occasional relapse into fits of incoherent fancies, the harbingers of sleep.  I remember, as it were, the instant when my thought ceased to flow and my senses were arrested by the wand of forgetfulness
I remember as a child the light of passing cars reflecting on the wall which fits right in with Edgar’s moon rays and his incoherent fancies correlates to my fantasy world but the one thing I didn’t have was the light on the chair.  The light in that upstairs bedroom had a string attached to the on/off chain which in an earlier period in my life had to be extended with a longer string attached to the top of the brass bed frame…within reach of my fearless self.  For you see when I was much younger (before the lengthening of the string) I was slightly afraid of the dark and my older brother would tell me that I would have to pull the string to shut off the light and jump in bed before the light went out.  Well I don’t remember how many nights I went through this ritual of attempting the speed of light and it was some time after big brother added the extension that I outgrew the nyctophobia but the extension remained as Edgar would say, “Within reach.”

Norman E. Hooben

 
[1]  Charles Brockden Brown (1771 - 1810)

[2] American Literature by William J. Long copyright 1913, 1923





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