Sleep Deprivation

During my freshman year of college I didn't sleep much. Over the summer before that year I had filled the void of year-round high school sports with an online game called Artifact. The game never stopped, so the easiest way to be good at it was to play non-stop, which I did. I didn't really taper off when I started classes so the math of a day became unfavorable for sleep. I managed to stay social mainly by roping a couple of my new friends at college into playing as well. As the semester dragged on the nights grew shorter until I was getting an average of four hours of sleep during the weeknights and cramming in twelve hours a night on weekends. As the weeks droned on the haze began to descend over my world and it slowly turned into Grand Theft Auto, minus the larceny and killing. Everything out of my immediate line of sight didn't exist and things that appeared out of the ether were only there long enough for me to pass by. When finals rolled around everything was magnified because I couldn't sit on cruise control through my classes anymore. There were papers and projects due that I had been pushing off like dust bunnies in front of a push broom. Now they were clambering up the handle like zombies in a low-budget horror movie. My weeknight sleep went from four hours to two. My weekend sleep went from twelve to four. While backing out of a parking space after lunch I fell asleep while looking over my shoulder and drug the front of my truck along the side of the car parked next to me. The only thing that woke me up was the jolt of its rear bumper losing the tug of war it had been playing with my front bumper. To this day I don't certainly know that incident happened because it was impossible to separate the real from the dreams. My friend who was riding with me told me what I had done and he had no reason to lie to me but my own brain has no comment on the matter.

Despite instances like that one I still functioned fairly normally. I was always exhausted but outwardly I appeared to be normal. There was also something about that base state of mind wherein the brain has moments of really, really incredible things during its struggle to simple maintain thoughts like "Eat food," and "Pants are required to leave your room." The toll it took is noticeable. At almost thirty I'm already turning into my father, falling asleep while the TV laughs at itself at six-thirty. Where the nineteen year old version of myself could keep my eyelids open with willpower alone the twenty-nine year old version struggles to avoid head bobs even after enough Full Throttle to kill three silverback gorillas. At nineteen I drove straight from Lincoln, Nebraska to South Padre Island, Texas, somewhere around twenty-two hours. In 2011 I had to pull over in eastern Colorado after seven or so hours because I was going to turn my car into modern art.

By now you're thinking "Just get more sleep, idiot," but it has never been that simple. When I descend into that mode of minimal sleep required by biology to continue living it gets harder and harder to get a full night of rest the longer I go without one. The desperation for a cool pillow blossoms into this fear that it isn't merely my consciousness slipping away when my eyelids close, it's the sands in the hourglass of my time here on Earth. The slowing, heavy breaths do not feel like dreams being pulled up over me but instead like Father Time with an ether-soaked rag. Try sleeping with that image in your brain, no matter tired you are. If you can I'd like to briefly explain the theory of perpetual motion and cold fusion to you because you are capable of anything.

In those moments I find myself jealous of those rare, comfortably religious people. Think less Rick Santorum, more Gandhi. But I don't desire their religion. I still look at using religion to cure my fear of death and the unknown as I look at people who quit smoking by using chew. What I do want is their faith. That Philosopher's Stone in their life that has told them the path they are on is true and washes away their self-doubt. For now my religion is kept in books. In books I have the unwavering faith that if I keep searching for answers on a nightly basis I will invariably wake up. Usually because I have passed out mid-sentence.

Humanity

I get pretty down on people and the world. Working in customer service as I do I get to see the lazy, stupid side of civilization. Every day I'm asked at least one question which makes me wonder how that person even survived to the age that they've acquired. What I realized today that I don't do often enough is to simply submerge myself in people in their natural habitat.

The only real time I have interaction with people is almost always in a commercial setting. Movie theaters, restaurants, department stores, places where people have a purpose. The problem with this is that we all have different ways of getting the things that we desire. Some people are forceful and yell and scream if they don't get there way, embarrassing their families by screaming until they are red in the face, forehead vein throbbing. Some people go the route of the 80's movie best friend who is in love with protagonist female, just be kind and patient and all good things will come to you of their own accord. The juxtaposition of these various styles in any given setting is a tragedy. The culprit: We act our own certain way because we believe it is the best way to accomplish our goal. Nobody does anything that they think is wrong or incorrect, you genuinely believe that how you act is the best way to act. But people who try different methods are idiots. And bastards. Take the screaming gentleman from earlier. If I see this man I get filled up with rage and go red in the face myself. I wonder what on this earth makes him think that he is better than the person he is yelling at to talk to them in such a way. But I am a person who believes that the best way to get what you want is to be honest and treat others with respect. If throbbing forehead vein guy saw me in a similar situation he would also think "What an idiot, he's never going to get what he wants," just like I do.

Walking in Balboa Park today nobody wanted anything from one another. It was a beautiful day in San Diego and tons of people were simply out enjoying the weather. Being Easter there was a church group reading Bible passages out loud. It wasn't to recruit followers, it wasn't to denounce homosexuality or Muslims or abortion, it was just what they saw fit to do on this day. Across from them were Syrian-Americans trying to raise awareness of the forceful suppression of freedom in that country. There were a group of Muslims trying to use Easter as an olive branch to show Christians that they have nothing against Jesus at all. There were Tarot readers and mimes, a violinist, balloon artists. The lady raising awareness for San Diego Bird Rescue had quite the crowd. Yet nobody seemed to want anything. The lone group of Christians trying to sell their version of Jesus as superior to other Jesii found few interested in being lectured about God when it was quite obvious that we were all in the presence of the one of our choosing. Even the peddlers of wares seemed to be following the Alcoholics Anonymous ideal of attraction over promotion. Even the children had the sense that today was somehow different as their volume dials were all set to an acceptable level, including the one wading through the fountain, his father following his progress, a look of pride in the adventurousness of his mini-me.

And in that moment I again felt the earth's heartbeat. That imperceptible rhythm that keeps us from strangling each other in restaurants. The rhythm that instills in us the idea that those movie scenes of impending global apocalypse where everybody comes together in peace and love might not be total bullshit. The sun grandstanded a bit with a 360 degree rainbow while the earth continued breathing in and out.

Dog training is substantially harder than you might imagine. By substantially harder I mean there are certain things that I hate spending time on because I'm bad at them and dog training is one of those things. I get frustrated by the cycle of Dot looking at me for guidance and me not knowing how to translate my objectives into woof. For her part, she is incredibly quick on the uptake. While I gave my dog free roam of my house in Omaha Dan objected to Dot jumping on his bed when he moved in. Within three days she recognized his bed as a no-fly zone and never had another issue. Yet when it comes to cat food I could rig a shotgun at the edge of the food bowl and she would pad right up, ears pinned back, and take the buckshot right to the skull. And I get frustrated because I know it's me. When I took some computer programming classes in college one of the professors had a saying. "Garbage in, garbage out," meaning that if you told the computer to do something stupid, it would. Dogs are apparently computers. That poop.

My frustration comes out of a weird place as well. Like everything else in life I've cultivated a dichotomous temperament. I can sit on the phone at work all day and have somebody scream at me over something trivial while maintaining the demeanor of a monk with a butterfly landing on his wrinkled Indian finger. Yes, if you're wondering, all monks looks like Gandhi in my head. And if I hear "Shaolin monks" I'm already thinking about the Wu Tang Clan. If I struggle with something that I should easily be able to take care of or something that I think I should excel at, it's an instant blind rage. It's always been that way only slightly more embarrassing. When I was younger, and if I'm being honest even occasionally now, if I go completely postal I just cry. It's the weirdest reaction ever and usually ends with me laughing because I feel rage bubbling up out of the top of my head...and then I'm crying. Big crocodile tears. Even though there are some neurons that obviously aren't connected properly the ones that are able to recognize "This is weird" still blast chemicals between each other, and after a minute or two of crying I just start laughing. The feeling of terminal frustration pervades for awhile after. Even know I get a flashback of the feeling. Something like a searing heat through all of my muscles coupled with big, gasping breaths. In that moment there isn't enough oxygen in all of the world to make me feel whatever the word is for sufficiently oxygenated. And when I laugh it takes me outside of myself. I can see myself standing there stitched together with dental floss. The seam is uneven and bits of stuffing hang out of the gaps between the thread while empty spaces occupy yet other ones. Overall I look like a sketch from Tim Burton's early years but I'm not ashamed of the quality. This is how I've put myself together and I've done the best that I could.

Sestina

The look in her eyes told me all manner of things.
Lights were out and the wind moaned under the door.
I looked at the tabby in the corner to break her gaze.
Not again was my only lingering thought.
My chair creaked as I shifted my weight
and for a brief moment I forgot the world.

And in the next moment she didn't crush my world.
She commented on the gravity of this thing,
how it was a decision that couldn't wait.
I willed somebody, anybody, to come through the door.
Maybe Jesus on a pegasus, I thought,
would divert her relentless gaze.

That gaze.
It began to make me unsteady as if I'd been whirled
around, stirring my gray matter and colliding my thoughts.
"Get me off of this thing!"
I screamed as I lunged for the door
but she hugged me and I was comforted by the weight.

The moment held its breath, waiting.
Her eyes closed on my shoulder but I still felt her gaze.
Inches from escape it was now eons to the door,
the floor stretching out like Pangea into the new world,
the globe on the floor depicting the whole thing
over an expanse of time that defies thought.

I realize the vacuum of the room has thawed.
Her grip on my torso still had weight
but the heaviness had gone out of the thing.
I no longer felt that gaze
and the globe with a bar inside it showed the correct world.
I didn't even notice the door.

Slowly gliding open on frictionless hinges. The door
that revealed a black hallway of thoughts
like blinking yellow eyes in a black, black forest world.
Waiting.
Affixing their eyes on us in a gaze
that dripped of starvation amongst the throngs.

And it was that gaze, from outside the door
that splintered my thoughts with a crushing weight
and stopped this thing, this woman, from leaving my room. My world.

Why You Should Read Literature

Of late I have neglected my reading. My fourth grade teacher Mrs. Forney can take credit for starting this particular habit. At the beginning of the year we each received a metal ring. The ring's purpose was to hold index cards with the name and a brief summary of each book that we read throughout the year. Since it was like a contest I quickly started plowing through Goosebumps and Hank the Cowdog until I had somewhere near one hundred cards by the end of the year. Since then I've just kept reading. Along the way there have been some road bumps. I still have not completed a book written by Charles Dickens, but I do wish that he lived in the age of motorcars so that he could've been gruesomely ended by one of them. Regardless, I have kept reading. And I've always focused on literature instead of fiction. Huge difference here and the impetus for my writing tonight.

People typically view non-fiction as a source of personal betterment and sage advice. Here is where my path diverges, and I'm going to try to show you why I'm right. Which is weird because I never ever ever do that winky face. Non-fiction is not what you should be reading to inspire change or improve your station. We can start with motivation. I can't look at a single rack of books on effective habits or engaging leadership without thinking that more than fifty percent of the author's motivation was dollar dollar bills, y'all. I look at the authors and wonder about their histories and their qualifications to tell other people how to live and act. I've hinted at it so I'll just call it out: Stephen Covey isn't qualified to tell people how to live. He did receive an MBA from Harvard and he has a doctorate in Religious Education, but his most successful endeavor to date has been telling people that he knows a better way to live than they do without anything in the vicinity of proof. It is great to get other people's viewpoints on things. Actually it's essential for us to thrive, but this is not the way to do it. And please don't read books on management or leadership. To save you the time I'll summarize all of them ever written right now: If you treat people with respect and show them that they have personal value, they will respond by acting respectably and valuable. Gasp.

This paragraph is about why you shouldn't limit your reading to David Baldacci, Stephen King, etc. As a note please understand that I do enjoy the occasional foray off of my high horse and read something that is technically garbage for pure self-indulgence, but that's my caution here. Much like eating nothing but Peeps for every meal will leave you fat, toothless, virginal and dead at thirty-three, reading nothing but genre fiction will leave your brain fat, toothless, virginal, and dead at thirty-three. These books are guilty pleasure. The literary equivalent of masturbating while thinking of the cougar next door that keeps wearing those sweaters with the plunging necklines. Keep it up and in a decade she will be sixty-five and no amount of therapy will be able to help you. Substitute all of the above references with genre fiction and you have my point.

Now we arrive at contemporary writers. The examples that come to my mind are The Hunger Games, anything by Chuck Palahniuk, The Harry Potter series, Tom Robbins, etc. In and of themselves benign, but the problem seeps in around the edges when you realize that all these are doing is marinating your thoughts in our current sociopolitical stew. The reason there are Timothy McVeigh's in the world is that with so much access to information we can swaddle ourselves in our own little world where are thoughts are never challenged and fester like plague. Like it or not, all of these authors above, no matter how divergent you think they may be, are all ringing the bell of class difference in our modern age somewhere in their writing. While it isn't always the main theme of the story, it's there, much the same way that your house smells like your pet no matter how much you clean and no matter how little you notice. Literature is the antidote. Truly timeless literature doesn't really push an agenda. On the Road and Of Mice and Men aren't pushing agendas, they just tell a story. Even if you read a book like Slaughterhouse Five which is pushing an agenda, it's not our agenda. It's an agenda for a world just coming out of war. Our hippie liberals are different than those hippie liberals. And that's what we need right now. We need to spend our days trying to find ways that our viewpoints are wrong or need to be modified instead of this insanely dogmatic environment that we live in. I am right and you are an idiot for disagreeing with me is usually the opening line to a story that ends poorly for the thick-skull. The learning in literature is ceaseless as well. In The Jungle, Upton Sinclair is writing about the horrific treatment of meatpacking workers in Chicago in the early 1800's. Read that book and you realize that while we have labor laws and two hundred years of experience under our belts every company still "speeds up" on it's employees, we just have different words now. So finish up The Hunger Games trilogy but go out and pick up The Heart of Darkness or For Whom the Bell Tolls. Your brain will reward you with green sprouts of fresh thoughts and an oxygen that you haven't felt in awhile.