A few thoughts on sleep, with inexact metaphors.

The people, these days, I have been resting an awful lot. Not today, not particularly. Today, I had breakfast with a poet friend, and then went to the Film Society for a couple of meetings, and then met with my colleague. And then drove out to a southwest corner of the valley to fetch my cell phone, but never mind. But yesterday, Sunday, I slept like nobody's business, pretty much all day long.

I think I am catching up on the sleep I haven't been getting for months. It feels compensatory. It feels like a kind of balancing of the books. It's like my sleep accounts have been depleted, like the way I was living my life was basically going to the Sleep ATM and withdrawing hours and hours and never putting any back. Does that metaphor even make any sense? I can see that it mostly doesn't, but I do feel like I have robbed myself--but why would I do that?--of something necessary and precious, and now I am going to sleep until I have paid myself back.

There is nothing so purely wonderful as falling into sleep--easily and without anxiety, just drifting into that dark, quiet place. That's what it has felt like as I have fallen into sleep over and over again, with no resistance, no fretting. Just falling into the dark.

I think I had my brief cold last week as a means of ensuring that I would do nothing, nothing whatsoever, but resting.

Currently, I am rereading a young adult book that I've read many, many times before. It is the perfect company for my sleep binge.

This sleep, it feels simultaneously like a luxury, like a kind of indulgence, but also like drinking water until a thirst is slaked. It feels like both things. Not that I feel I have much choice about it, but I am going to sleep until I have had my fill, until I am no longer indebted, but paid in full.