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The joys of late somnolence

by Scott McNutt

I love getting up early. To rise before the sun, to gaze upon heaven’s starry brilliance before it fades, to taste the dampness of the settling dew, to smell the musty loam before exhaust fumes blanket it, to touch the black stillness of the pre-dawn air, to listen to the silence before the birds sing—these are the things that make a man feel truly alive.

No, not really. You didn’t take that nonsense seriously, did you?

You carpe your diem, I carp if I don’t get my per diem of sleep per noctem. Warren Zevon can boast that he’ll sleep when he’s dead because, well, because he is dead, but I’ll sleep as many waking hours as I can while I’m alive to enjoy it. No Mr. Mojo Rise ‘n’ Shine am I; I’m more of a Mr. No, no, sleepin’ in is fine, thangyoovarrymuch. Snorrrrrrrrrrre.

Sadly, sleep is a most unappreciated gift. Authorities from Proverbs to Plato, from Shakespeare to Virginia Woolf, despise sleep as useless, as laziness, and as a curtailment of both the business and pleasure of the waking world. Much of mainstream America shares these sentiments. So adulthood and the need to succeed hamper the lifestyle of the avid sleeper.

After one or two or 10 or 15 years of getting up at 6:45 a.m. to jerk that drowsing worm out of its comfy little burrow, one becomes accustomed to awaking at ungodly hours, especially when it seems God himself wants it that way. Proverbs 19:15 charges that laziness brings on deep sleep; 20:13 warns that those who love sleep will suffer in poverty. So it’s no wonder Christians have the custom of praying before retiring to bed: They’re afraid God’ll catch ‘em napping.

Yes, for many people, especially the driven, ambitious, humorless, Puritan sort whose type populates so much of North America, sleep is only a means to end. They are fond of citing Poor Richard’s famous aphorism about rising early to work relentlessly on being healthy, wealthy, and wise, conveniently forgetting the part about going to bed early so’s to enjoy a long snooze. Like Walt Disney, who said, “if you can dream it, you can do it,” those industrious sorts bridle at the need for slumber but extol the virtue of the fantasies that sleep shows us. To those diligent, sleepless souls, I say “feh!”

Speaking of things said about sleep, an aside to today’s youth: Not that I’m going to lose any sleep over it, but kids, just because A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Worriers attributes the quote “Sleep. Those little slices of death. How I loathe them,” to Edgar Allan Poe, that doesn’t mean the attribution is correct, no matter how many Internet sites also erroneously credit the saying to the master of the macabre. Though it may seem poetic, or perhaps Poe-tish, the statement appears to originate from a script by Walter Reisch and Charles Brackett for the 1959 movie Journey to the Center of the Earth. Thus endeth the lesson. Go to bed.

Where was I? Ah, snarling “feh!” at today’s adult, at least the Puritanical, productivity-obsessed, sleep-miserly segment, who begrudge the rest of us the pleasure of quietus. “Feh!” I say to them, and I find myself saying it a lot. Mostly because I like saying “feh!” but partly because lacking sleep as they are, they can’t understand anything more complicated than that. If only they could.

If only these magnates of production yet paupers of slumber could understand that sleep is a palliative, a restorative, a balm. Heck, sleep is an obvious alternative to enduring the endless, inexorable grind of politicking in this shank of the election season. If we as a nation collectively chose to sleep through Nov. 2, we could send a powerful message that we want neither of the main parties’ incompetent candidates to lead us. If the world collectively would just sleep one hour late, that would be one hour fewer in the day for any to afflict harm on another.

It may not be much, but that’s my dream. And if you can dream it, you can do it. So I’m going back to bed.

October 14, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 42 © 2004 Metro Pulse