Falling asleep at night has grown into a knotty task for me these days. It is a double-conditioning process: in the first half of insomnia, I think about study/job/future blah after lying down; the second half, I worry about thinking too much about them. I was scared by my own occasional mental association that, in this fashion, perhaps I would become the insomniac entrepreneur in one of the folk tales in Rana Dasgupta’s Tokyo Cancelled. The pleasant accompany of insomnia encouraged me to get to know more about it. I found a smart article “The Poetry of Insomnia” by John Lundberg in HP, talking about what the nocturnal are to do. His preferred method of coping with sleeplessness is picking up a book and read. According to him, both Chaucer and the less exciting Shakespeare’s plays work pretty well. Without any doubt, some part of the Shakespeare historical dramas even works during the day time—super-effective.
Some poems about Insomnia are also recommended: “Lines Written at Night during Insomnia” beautifully written by Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, “Insomnia” by Dana Gioia with just perfect beat and detailed anatomy, and Whitman’s “A Clear Midnight” in Leaves of Grass which is so tranquilizing that I can’t stop myself reading it, writing it and reciting it over and over again:
THIS is thy hour O soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best.
Night, sleep, death and the stars.
P. S. Lisa Russ Spaar edited a book Acquainted with the Night published by Columbia University Press in 1999, such a romantic savior.
November 20, 2010 at 9:13 AM |
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