(photo by Sana Bindra)
I can not sleep. It recurs again and again. At the onset insomnia is exciting. It acts on the mind almost as a drug. Then it drags the body along with it. My train of thought accelerates, rumbling through the darkness. It is thrilling at first. It takes me with it in flight. But then the excitement cycles from zenith to nadir and back again ever more quickly; sleep never comes. The accelerated thought gives way to a manic restlessness. I want only for the cessation of consciousness, but it can't happen while I am staring at it in my mind, troubling it, it troubling me. All things become an open curse. Vision is an affliction in the darkness, a malediction. The fatigued mind births patterns, fractals of light missing, darkness spreading ever more quickly, and away. A psychedelia in reverse. No thought can be followed through to completion. I get trapped in unlit fragments.
Begging for all thought to cease is just another way of thinking. All things become continued introspection and further wakefulness. Prayer for sleep is merely the mind talking to itself, interacting with its memories of itself. Insomnia is self-conniving, self-convincing, selfish. Insomnia is like having a roommate with a drug problem.
Almost anybody can nap in the daytime, at night it is another thing.
If only this dying were not so temporary, sleep.
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