The Problem with Sleep

There’s this girl.

She has a problem with falling asleep. Not in the usual way that people might think. When we say she has problem with falling asleep, I mean that she doesn’t want to fall asleep. The main reason behind which is that she doesn’t want to wake up.

Let’s take the case of last Tuesday night. Tuesday was a holiday. Monday was terrible, and she fell asleep the moment she lay on the bed after dutifully brushing her teeth and brushing her hair. She had looked forward to falling asleep the whole Monday long. And then she woke up on Tuesday morning.

“No,” she groaned.

“No, I don’t want to wake up, it’s so horrible to be awake,” she thought.

She spent her Tuesday holiday slowly, taking her time. She didn’t bother to change out of her pyjamas until she felt she really needed to shower, around noontime. She made herself a nicely heavy late lunch which she thought was enough for three people to eat. She spent the rest of the afternoon eating all of it; some while watching TV, some while aimlessly surfing the internet, and some while dutifully working on the preparations for work the next day. She alternately brewed tea and coffee and sipped them while watching rented videos – all romantic comedies. When the last of the videos’ credits were rolling, she looked up at the clock and saw that it was 1:30 a.m. and she felt a bit sleepy.

And that’s the problem. She didn’t want to sleep.

“No,” she moaned, “I don’t want to wake up again.”

But she turned off the TV and got off the couch anyway and dutifully did the dishes, brushed her teeth and her hair, put on her pyjamas, switched off the lights, and went to bed.

And cried, silently. And fell asleep.

The Small World

I have been to two countries. My mother country, and Japan.

In Japan, I have met many people who have travelled to many, many countries all over the world. The Japanese love to travel: they work their bones off, earn the dough, and take advantage of their few holidays to go wherever they want to go, whether it be within their own wondrous country, or far beyond the oceans that surround it. And I am very, very envious of them.

When I came to Japan, I've always thought of it as my one and only chance to see the real world outside of my own. I thought it would widen my world so much more. I would do something so different from what everyone around expected me to do, and what very few had the resources to spend on. So I grabbed the chance and took the plunge.

And then I met these travellers. And I heard their stories - what they've seen, the food they tasted, the music they heard, the experiences they had - and my world never felt so very small indeed. And I felt so envious. I wished I never came to Japan and saw how beautiful it is, how much BETTER it is than anything I've ever seen before. I wished I never came to Japan and met these people who have travelled and have seen so much more than I could ever experience. And I wished I never heard their first-hand stories, or seen the look on their faces as they shared their tales. How I wished that the BIG world stayed in the pictures and the screens and my dreams where no one REAL actually exists. Hearing those first-hand stories from real people made that big world real, too. And all the more painfully unreachable.

How small my world is, I thought. How confined. I thought I'd free myself, and I did, for a while, only to find myself merely in a bigger cage. Or is it?

My travel has been beautiful. Soon it will be over. I will have to go back to my even smaller world. But I'm not sorry for it, I don't regret anything. Perhaps the big world is merely waiting for me. Perhaps I'll have another chance to escape again, for a little while.

Poetry from "Beauty and the Beast"

Longing
By Matthew Arnold

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For so the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times,
A messenger from radiant climes,
And smile on thy new world, and be
As kind to others as to me!

Or, as thou never cam'st in sooth,
Come now, and let me dream it truth,
And part my hair, and kiss my brow,
And say, My love why sufferest thou?

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For so the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.


Acquainted with the Night
By Robert Frost

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
A luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.



Love Song
By Rainier Maria Rilke

How shall I hold my soul that it may not
Be touching yours? How shall I lift it then
Above you to where other things are waiting?
Ah, gladly would I lodge it, all forgot,
With some lost thing the dark is isolating
On some remote and silent spot that, when
Your depths vibrate, is not itself vibrating.
You and me - all that lights upon us, though,
Brings us together like a fiddle-bow
Drawing one voice from two strings it glides along.
Across what instrument have we been spanned?
And what violinist holds us in his hand?
O sweetest song.


I Arise from Dreams of Thee
By Percy Bysshe Shelley

I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright
I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet
Has led me -- who knows how? --
To thy chamber-window, sweet!

The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream, --
The champak odors fall
Like sweet thoughts in a dream,
The nightingale's complaint,
It dies upon her heart,
As I must die on thine,
O, beloved as thou art!

O, lift me from the grass!
I die, I faint, I fall!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale,
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My Heart beats loud and fast
Oh! press it close to thine again,
Where it will break at last!


She Walks in Beauty
By Lord Byron

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!


somewhere i have never travelled
by e.e. cummings

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

The Cicadas

At the moment, I am in a small city in semi-rural Japan, and it is a week into September. Slowly but surely, it is becoming cooler and cooler each day. Summer is saying fare well for now. But the cicadas are still as loud as ever.

In Japan, cicadas come out in the summer after a seven-year-long pupal stage. Seven years buried underground, alone in the dark - can you imagine? And then they change, they grow wings and come out into the light and heat - to create life. They sing and sing and sing. When the seasons start to change, they will bury the next generation of cicadas, and then leave the world behind.

Autumn is beginning in Japan. And yet, the cicadas are still singing. Fiercely hanging on to what's left of a brief life, they throw all their might into the effort of finding their mate. And when they do, they will create a mystery, and then die.

Is that what we are all here for?

I suppose...

I suppose I just needed a place where I could openly ask the world my rhetorical questions. I do find some answers sometimes, but I don't expect the world to answer back all the time. All the same, just asking gives me some comfort at least.
So... Hello, World! I have a few questions...