Sleep

It is vital for our well being and to ensure that we can go about our daily activities. It helps improve memory, process emotions and allows our bodies to repair themselves. But it is not always so simple to achieve just the right amount of sleep.

'A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.' Charlotte Brontë

I'm sure most of us have experienced this at some point or another. Those long nights where thoughts continue to whirl around your mind long after being snuggled down under the covers. Now there are many places that will tell you to only use a bed for sleep or sex, and whilst I believe these are important where's the reading? To me being in bed with a good book is wondrous. I find losing myself in another world, ideally a fictional one that is several steps removed from my academic work, can soothe my mind so that sleep descends upon it. I couldn't count the number of times that I wake up with my hand still holding the book open on the right page and the light on. This is why I'd recommend investing in a good long-life bulb for the bedside lamp.

What about too much sleep? Those nights where you awake for a few moments just to plunge back into another dream. Nothing seems to rouse you for very long. Your own world is the most seductive. These are not 8 hour sleep nights but ones where it's 12, 15 or sometimes even 24 hours out of 30 (the latter is usually from some kind of illness). It's as though your body will not permit you to do anything other than dream. I find these days confusing because when it comes around to bedtime there is rarely any difficulty in going back to sleep again. These sleeps are vital for healing, comfort and restoration in a time of crisis or transition. This aspect brings me to Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum's book Madeline is Sleeping that is a dream-like book of sexual awakening, coming of age and a girl Madeline who has been asleep for a long time reminiscent of Sleeping Beauty. I will discuss this in more depth another day, but for now I will leave you with part of the opening fragment of the book:

'hush

HUSH, MOTHER SAYS. Madeline is sleeping. She is so beautiful when she sleeps, I do not want to wake her.

The small sisters and brothers creep about the bed, their gestures of silence becoming magnified and languorous, fingers floating to pursed lips, tip toes rising and descending as if weightless. Circling about her bed, their frantic activity slows; they are like tiny insects suspended in sap, kicking dreamily before they crystallize into amber. Together they inhale softly and the room fills with one endless exhalation of breath: Shhhhhhhhhhhhh.'

Madeline is Sleeping, p. 1