I can’t sleep. It happens a lot. I am always able to fall asleep, I just have trouble staying asleep. After my mom died I don’t think I slept three straight hours for a few years. I always thought that was what it must feel like to have a newborn baby in the house, not that I had to do much of anything when I woke, just that during the day I felt endlessly exhausted from never getting more than a few hours rest at a time. That time in my life was also about when I started working for Starbucks and getting up at 3am. No matter what time you go to bed, 3am always comes to quickly and an afternoon nap is usually inevitable. Again, eight hours of sleep proved illusive again for many more years. The past year I have found myself waking up a lot in the middle of the night too, the bed feeling strangely empty and expansive. I try to wrap myself tightly in the covers but it still can always feel that great big cold expanse spread out next to me; like I might just roll over into all that emptiness and fall of the side of the world. Sometimes I try to hug a pillow for comfort but in the end it just usually leaves me feeling reminded of my own aloneness. In any event, the point here is that 3am and I are perhaps better friends than I am with most other hours in the day. And if we're going to be completely honest, I suppose maybe all these excuses for why I've been sleep deprived for years on end, are to cover up for the fact that I’ve just got too much going on in this damn head of mine to sleep restfully. So much anxiety and stress that it wakes me up in the middle of the night. I am hopeful that maybe if I start writing everyday and letting out some of the thoughts that are swimming circles in my brain, they will stop bumping into the concious side of my brain at night and waking me up. Maybe by speaking, or writing as it were, my thoughts down on a daily basis I will get a solid eight hours of sleep!!! Yes, it really is a that-kind-of-exciting, three exclamation points worthy, kind of thought.
In any event, the positive side of being unable to sleep is I get to read. Or write for that matter. Often times when I read before bed, or even during the day after work, I always fall asleep about two pages into the whole endeavor and it takes me forever anymore to finish one damn book. Lately I have been reading any of Anne Lamott’stuff of the non fiction variety that I can get my hands on. Right now I am reading Bird by Bird, Some Instructions on Writing and Life. It appears to have been published over a decade ago and before any of her other non fiction books, those about her thoughts on faith, were published. She seems to have been, at least in the publishing world, only a novelist at this point. In any event, there is one chapter called “Looking Around” which is my favorite and it is all about why she writes, the purpose. There’s so many wonderful things she says here and here are just a few...
“Writing is about learning to pay attention and communicate what is going on... Your job is to see people as they really are, and to do this you have to know who you are are in the most compassionate sense possible. Then you can recognize others. It’s a simple concept, but not that easy to do... I honestly think in order to be a writer you have to learn to be reverent. If not, why are you writing? Why are you here? Let’s think of reverence as awe, as presence in and openness to the world. The alternative is that we stultify, we shut down. Think of those times when you’ve read poetry or prose that has been presented in such a way that you have a fleeting sense of being startled by beauty or insight, a glimpse into someone’s soul. All of a sudden everything seems to fit together or at least have meaning for a moment. This is our goal as writers I think; to help others have this sense of- please forgive me- wonder, of seeing things anew, things that can catch us off guard, that break our small, bordered worlds. When this happens, everything feels more spacious... There is ecstasy in paying attention. You can get into a kind of Wordsorthian openness to the world where you see in everything the essence of holiness, a sign that God is implicit in all of creation. Or maybe you are not predisposed to see the world sacramentally...anyone who wants to can be surprised by the beauty or pain of the natural world.... Mostly things are that way, not that simple and pure, with so much focus given to each syllable of life as it sings itself. But that kind of attention is the prize. To be engrossed by something outside ourselves is a powerful antidote for the rational mind...”
Not since reading Emerson for the first time have I read someone who so perfectly captured the way I felt about something, about everything. And Lamott does this consistently. I find myself reading her books and thinking, “Exactly!” and wishing there was someone else here to be experiencing this revelation and assurance with me. In my own humble observation, Lamott has many a great thing to say, many a keen observation about the oneness of the world, but I particularily like her thoughts on the purpose of writing, of why we do it; on looking at the minutia and ordinariness of the world, and seeing meaning there. About seeing and describing in whatever clarity we can muster, the divinity in everything and everyone around us and making others who might not ordinarilly see it, recognize it too. Or making those who do, exclaim internally with wild excitement as I do when I read Lamott, that someone has finally described so acurately with paper and ink, a thought inside their very own head. I suppose all of this in the end, this desire to create meaning from the mystery and to startle people with beauty and awe of the world around them, to make them feel part of something greater than themselves and make them feel a deeper connection to the world and with others, is why I write. What makes me qualified to do any of that, I don’t know. I’m not really qualified at all I suppose, not anymore than anyone else out there... but for some reason it just feels right. And so with the advice of Rumi, I am following what feels right, letting myself be drawn by the strange pull of what I really love and trusting, or maybe, hoping desperately, is a better fit here, this strange pull will not lead me astray...
In any event, the positive side of being unable to sleep is I get to read. Or write for that matter. Often times when I read before bed, or even during the day after work, I always fall asleep about two pages into the whole endeavor and it takes me forever anymore to finish one damn book. Lately I have been reading any of Anne Lamott’stuff of the non fiction variety that I can get my hands on. Right now I am reading Bird by Bird, Some Instructions on Writing and Life. It appears to have been published over a decade ago and before any of her other non fiction books, those about her thoughts on faith, were published. She seems to have been, at least in the publishing world, only a novelist at this point. In any event, there is one chapter called “Looking Around” which is my favorite and it is all about why she writes, the purpose. There’s so many wonderful things she says here and here are just a few...
“Writing is about learning to pay attention and communicate what is going on... Your job is to see people as they really are, and to do this you have to know who you are are in the most compassionate sense possible. Then you can recognize others. It’s a simple concept, but not that easy to do... I honestly think in order to be a writer you have to learn to be reverent. If not, why are you writing? Why are you here? Let’s think of reverence as awe, as presence in and openness to the world. The alternative is that we stultify, we shut down. Think of those times when you’ve read poetry or prose that has been presented in such a way that you have a fleeting sense of being startled by beauty or insight, a glimpse into someone’s soul. All of a sudden everything seems to fit together or at least have meaning for a moment. This is our goal as writers I think; to help others have this sense of- please forgive me- wonder, of seeing things anew, things that can catch us off guard, that break our small, bordered worlds. When this happens, everything feels more spacious... There is ecstasy in paying attention. You can get into a kind of Wordsorthian openness to the world where you see in everything the essence of holiness, a sign that God is implicit in all of creation. Or maybe you are not predisposed to see the world sacramentally...anyone who wants to can be surprised by the beauty or pain of the natural world.... Mostly things are that way, not that simple and pure, with so much focus given to each syllable of life as it sings itself. But that kind of attention is the prize. To be engrossed by something outside ourselves is a powerful antidote for the rational mind...”
Not since reading Emerson for the first time have I read someone who so perfectly captured the way I felt about something, about everything. And Lamott does this consistently. I find myself reading her books and thinking, “Exactly!” and wishing there was someone else here to be experiencing this revelation and assurance with me. In my own humble observation, Lamott has many a great thing to say, many a keen observation about the oneness of the world, but I particularily like her thoughts on the purpose of writing, of why we do it; on looking at the minutia and ordinariness of the world, and seeing meaning there. About seeing and describing in whatever clarity we can muster, the divinity in everything and everyone around us and making others who might not ordinarilly see it, recognize it too. Or making those who do, exclaim internally with wild excitement as I do when I read Lamott, that someone has finally described so acurately with paper and ink, a thought inside their very own head. I suppose all of this in the end, this desire to create meaning from the mystery and to startle people with beauty and awe of the world around them, to make them feel part of something greater than themselves and make them feel a deeper connection to the world and with others, is why I write. What makes me qualified to do any of that, I don’t know. I’m not really qualified at all I suppose, not anymore than anyone else out there... but for some reason it just feels right. And so with the advice of Rumi, I am following what feels right, letting myself be drawn by the strange pull of what I really love and trusting, or maybe, hoping desperately, is a better fit here, this strange pull will not lead me astray...
Namste
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