Sleepless

I am the kind of friend you can call at 3 am because more often than not, I would still be awake, reading and listening to music. I have a friend who suffers from transient insomnia so we chat on the phone once in a while in the small hours of morning. But when I called him around 2:30 am on Saturday, he told me to get out of bed and clean the bathroom. Drink milk. Count sheep. Play with Fritz. Or get back to bed and have an orgasm!

The latter was not a bad idea…but when I started reading ‘Istanbul’ (by Orhan Pamuk), I forgot his advice. By 4 am, I started noticing fine cracks on the wall. The wall beside my bed. The wall right beside my bed that I spend so many sleepless nights staring at. Through the years, I’ve developed a very special intimacy with my wall. Ours is an intimacy by circumstance. When I have long passed the point of resisting and in a peaceful state of surrender, I give up to its cozy closeness and undemanding company.

But there are instances when the serenity of our companionship is broken. I imagine Fritz being devoured by garapata so I'd go downstairs to check on him, scan the kitchen walls for crawling, creepy insects that might attack my dog. Or I would smell something burning. Or hear roaches somewhere near my bedroom door. Or listen to the callings of cats in heat. Then I’d fall asleep before sunrise.

Oh, I have not seen the sunrise in many, many years. The last sunrise that left an impression on me was the one I saw from the deck of a ship in 1990 on my way home to Negros. I don’t sleep on ships---worried of an underwater volcano that might erupt while I’m asleep, boulder of rocks the ship might bump into and other crazy things only a neurotic can concoct. It was a magnificent sunrise by the way, with hues of silver, purple, pink, orange and red. That reminds of a scene in a movie, 'Interview with a Vampire'---Louis (Brad Pitt) watching his last sunrise before becoming a vampire. Like Louis, I'm longing to see the sunrise again—when, I don’t know.

My sister would say in jest that she sleeps like a baby because she has a clear conscience. While I don’t claim to have crystal clear conscience, I attribute my sleeplessness to thinking too much, beautiful music, great literary works and the moon.

Dawn: When men of reason go to bed. ~Ambrose Bierce