O sleep,
blessed is your embrace.
though fickle can your affections be,
I remain, as always,
your disciple.
***
I am such a slut for sleep.
I know a lot of people who see more then six hours of sleep as a waste. They mock my complaints when some activity requires me to forgo a few hours of sleep. To be honest, I am not sure why I need eight hours of sleep; I believe it is because I abuse my conscious mind so much that it requires several REM states just to stretch and work out all the kinks my active mind busily creates.
But it matters not why. I am content to just adore sleep and not question my affections for her.
I love waking up gradually and stretching luxuriously in bed as consciousness slips in like an old lover, inhabiting my limbs once more.
I love the feeling that comes with waking up too early and then finding out that, for one reason or another, I get another half hour or so of sleep. I greedily draw those minutes to me, all the more precious because they shouldn’t be there.
Give me eight or nine hours of sleep every night and I can handle anything. Angry, frustrated co-workers become people who just need subtle nudges in the right direction to succeed. Cat-ravaged curtains become an excuse to buy something in a deeper shade of green. Bumper-to-bumper traffic becomes a way to catch up on the intriguing audio book I am in the midst of listening to. Harsh criticism becomes creative critiquing. Broken processes become puzzles of efficiency. Proposals become a game of wordcrafting. Bratty submissives become convenient excuses to practice innovated spanking techniques.
As the narrator says in Fight Club: I become the calm, little center of the world. I become a Zen Master.
With just six or seven hours of sleep, I become…a normal human being. With less then six hours of sleep…bad things happen. Mogwai eating after midnight-like bad things.
I haven’t been getting much sleep the last few days. But – as of tomorrow, I am off to a lake house for a week. I plan to get a lot of sleep. And then I plan to use my calm little center to toss stones into the gentle tranquility of others. Ripples can be so much fun. Especially when they have affects unexpected by those who think they know better.