Today's writing prompt is to write a poem or rant or short fiction related to sleeping and dreaming or not sleeping and not dreaming. If the heading "sleeping around" meant something else to you, that's also fine.
I'll post mine shortly.
SLEEPING AROUND When you get older You will stop sleeping Or you will sleep fitfully You will understand The expression "toss and turn" Your king bed isn't big enough for the royal we. When you get older.
In the course of a night & if you have more than one bed
you will visit them all --
and the sofa
and the floor
in the course of a night.
Turning and turning in your widening gyre. Toss the blankets, sheets, pillows
Toss your bedmate to one side
& the other
Lie face to face
Face to feet
Turn your back, your front
Left side, right.
It's a pleasure to join this group even if I cannot promise to be a frequent visitor. Anyway, I was tempted to leave a comment on Lil's poem. BTW, I didn't know that Lil would venture on poetry, which is the ultimate distillation of literature. To me it's a delightful surprise! The piece is so personal and universal at the same time. Yes, we've been there too - only in cycles for the time being. At any rate, Einstein used to sleep only for four hours and lived til he was 76 in accordance with his on will to have an elegant exit. I wish everyone health. But, if Lil can create something like this out of her insomnia, I can barely wish her a better sleep and eagerly wait for more nocturne productivity ;-)
I already have trouble sleeping. Does that mean I'll be in for an even worse sleeping experience in middle age? (Also, fantastic poem!)
Yes, but there is better living through technology. I was just talking to a guy tonight who had an amazing improve-your-sleep smart phone app. He would put the cell phone on his bed and it would measure vibrations - so it could tell if you were tossing and turning. It apparently could tell when you were in the deepest sleep. Then there were ways of typing in how much and when you ate, whether you drank or not, whether you exercised or not, whether you socialized or not and the app collects data over several weeks. Eventually it would tell you which combination of behaviours gave you the best and deepest sleep. The guy told us that he wakes up more often now feeling fantastic. $3 app. He said the best thing about it was that it had an alarm that would not wake him in a deep sleep cycle. He would tell the app to wake him between 7:00 and 8:00 and it would sense by his movements when he is out of the deepest sleep. I think this is very cool. He looked pretty good too -- and had a busy software business and family life. I don't know what the app was called, but if anyone is interested, I will ask him.
That does sound like a good app... but it sounds like a lot of work for me. I could imagine a future app that just collected data for me without me having to input it. I think most people would use that. I have also read that some biologists are experimenting with getting rid of the need for sleep period. Application of such a compound or genetically engineered procedure is probably several decades away from practical application, but it may be something everyone could take advantage of in the 2050s and beyond.
I really enjoy sleeping and I think it does more than just rest my body/brain. I think it informs my creativity quite a bit. I would be shocked if there weren't adverse effects to eliminating sleep, even if resting of the brain/body were accounted for. My guess is that there are far more things happening that we don't realize on a psychological scale.
Oh most definitely agree. Sleeping is universal because it helps the brain rest and reorganize. Sleep is massively beneficial (obviously). However, once we understand the fundamental cause of a particular instinct (i.e., sleep, sex, etc.) we can, in principle, start to intelligently direct it how we would like it to be (as opposed to how natural selection designed it to be). My general philosophy is that the 20th century was spent understanding biological and physical law; while the 21st century will be spent tinkering it in profound ways. Tinkering with biological law will allow us to design our own conscious existence however we would like it to be. Tinkering with physical law will allow us to design space-time however we would like it to be. I doubt this entire process will take place this century. However, I do feel like we will make extreme strides this century towards redirecting our instincts in more preferable directions.
I understand where you're coming from, I just think that in this particular area I wouldn't be surprised if science thinks they've got a solution that allows for the elimination of sleep, while keeping people vitally energized both physically and mentally and it receives mass appeal, for obvious reasons. Then many years later people start to realize that for some reason, all the art, the songs, the literature are slightly less amazing or that they feel like their missing something, there's some void and they can't quite place what it is. I realize that they could create ways of getting people to a dream state immediately and for only 1 hour stretches to be more time efficient, but perhaps there's more to sleeping and dreaming than biology will reveal? It's a pretty amazing thing. Just playing devils advocate here, I have no scientific basis for any of this. However, I am a BIG fan of sleeping. I do it well.
Haha, fair enough. Sleep (or any other fundamental instinct) won't likely be changed easily or in the next few decades. I'd wager that sex and reproduction will be fundamentally altered quicker than sleep will be. However, I do see that the emergence of high-AI will be a selection pressure towards us altering our sleep profoundly in the 2050s. It won't be done if it substantially lowers our waking capabilities, and overcoming that will be a difficult challenge that I don't mean to underestimate. I just think the selection pressure will be strong enough and the intelligence in existence will be up to the task. Also, the necessary precursor technologies already exist.I am a BIG fan of sleeping. I do it well.
The poem was beautiful lil, and I realize it may not be literal, but I am responding as such because in our house we are constantly facing crisis of sleep. Whether it be a 2 year old that isn't sure she likes her big-kid bed or my wife that swears I snore, sleep is a hot topic these days. My whole life my grandparents have had separate rooms they sleep in. I've always pledged that this would NEVER happen to me. I better stop snoring. Beautiful poem lil.
Something you realize as you get older: A good mattress is well worth the investment. We have a sleep number bed which allows two settings for either side. We love it. When away from home a good mattress can make or break the experience. It's important stuff.
Reoccurring Dream I have He wears a rhinestoned Notre Dame hat
He asks her if she likes it
and scowls at me
She sat next to me today
Slipped her feet from her sandals
The bus driver is jealous
She sits with me again
Pretends to sleep on my shoulder
He thinks he's in love
She's fifteen, he's fifty
Every time I make her laugh, he turns
I fucking hate Notre Dame
it has been said you cannot die while dreaming in your bed "Not True", I say! my deaths I've seen in dreams along the way I've drowned, been shot and stabbed and crushed, but I find more often than not none of those things repeat like the dream, my body, from the rafters swings all dreams 'til now but one day soon I'll die and know not how
I meant that as you're dying, and you realize that you will die, how do you cope? Or do you? I've only had a couple dreams like that myself where it's vivid enough to come to complete peace with death... profound stuff! And of course, always nice to wake up after that.
I was once shot dead in a dream in a slow motion Matrix-esque sequence after shooting Matt Damon as Jason Bourne. The dream in its entirety was quite long and is one of the favourites that I've had. Of course as it's impossible to imagine pure nothingness everything was just empty darkness and I was repeating "I've got to wake up" over in my head until I woke up. I wasn't amazed to find myself alive but I was certainly shaken a little bit. It wasn't as scatty as when I had a false awakening. That was one of the weirdest things I've ever experience. Also the time I awoke from a nightmare having a panic attack wasn't particularly fun either.
I've experienced "false awakenings" a number of times. They usually happen after a dream that I have where I know that I am dreaming. For example, when I have a "lucid" dreams in which I am flying, I can control many aspects of the dream. Then I will cease having that control and be in a normal situation and feel as though I've woken up and I'm in reality. These dreams are often pretty scary because they seemingly have consequences. Most of my dreams on some level I know that I am dreaming but with the "false awakening" dreams, I don't at all. When something goes wrong in the dream, I really feel like it's happening. Waking up to a panic attack would suck. Sorry you had to go through that.
I jolted up in bed and punched the mattress, accompanying it with a frustrated grunt. It had been another restless night and I was beginning to feel as if my existence was futile. The only reason I have to live was now to sleep, yet I could see the dust gently pirouetting in rays of sun that streamed through my curtains so I admitted the night a failure. I got up and mindlessly lumbered over to my Apple Macbook, even though I knew it fruitless. I was unable to process much information in this state anyway but I felt it was my last remaining grip on the outside world. The piercing light of the screen penetrated my eyes as I lifted up the screen, though even this couldn't force them to close for more than a few seconds. I scanned the opened tabs and was reminded of the failed antidotes: Binaural beats, white noise, melatonin tables, rescue remedy. All had failed to shift my state into the rejuvenating embrace of dreams and nothingness. As I swiftly closed the amalgamation of tabs, an unfamiliar site met my lifeless glare. Silk Road. "Ah yes, Silk Road," I thought "the online home of all things illicit." It was a site shrouded in secrecy, lurking in the Deep Web and accessible only via Tor, an anonymous network. I must've opened it up in my sleepless stupor, but I can't recall when. I scanned the page with as much interest as I could muster and gleaned that this user, 'Nightjar', was a slighty erratic chemist selling an experimental sleep drug he'd concocted in his home lab. It was called Sumnosaphate. A few days passed before the nondescript package encroached my letter box, thought it didn't feel like that. By this point, time just vaguely meandered from one point to the next. I was sometimes unsure it was moving at all. It felt fatiguing just to open the bubble wrap envelope, but as it gave way a blank box tumbled into my lap. In it 12 pills lay wrapped in cling film, as well as a handwritten leaflet. It said the normal medicine mumbo jumbo: "Don't take with alcohol," "Don't operate machinery." The usual shit. A disclaimer at the bottom caught my eye, it had my signature there, stating that the anonymous concocter was not responsible for any undesirable outcomes. How did he even know who I was? I'd never signed anything. I was too tired to care. I popped two of the pill, got up and flicked the light switch, failing to realise it had been broken for days. I rolled my eyes at my own ignorance and slumped onto the mattress. A man, clad in a white doctor's coat, shook me awake.
The embrace of a bed; so soft so warm, rejected by your restless head; you toss you turn, fearing the clock face; it tick and tocks, you stress, you burn at a rushed pace a cigarette, smoke mocks the stillness of your room.
Ah right, about that. I got that poem published and so it "first" appeared in Printer's Devil Review a few months back (wink wink, nudge nudge). Anyhow, that poem can now be seen on my site at the bottom of the linked post. There is also a link to the magazine that published it.
"Undercover-er" is what happens when a poet comes to the plate. Rico, I am beginning to think that you are the real thing. Thanks for posting the link. These lines deserve rereading: and I enjoyed once again a tongue in your poetic cheek. Tonguing seems to be a theme of yours. Here it is in this wonderful line: Note: What do you think of deleting the "still" before the 1000 beer bottles, but keeping the "still" in the next line? Would that work? (I still have to post my comments on the Harper's article.)leaving sleep is not leaving/bed. Rather it is an ending, a lost thing, small/as molted eyelashes, skin flakes, sleep sand
something untasted in the textures of torpor's/questing tongues