" 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)
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