Bedless: Night Two

I must say that I did not get a very good night’s sleep last night. Pre-existing insomnia aside, it was very difficult to fall asleep lying upon the floor, knowing that there was a warm, comfortable, vacant bed right next to me.

Once again, I was out sort of late last night so I was probably more tired than usual at bedtime. However this time, unlike the night before last, the extra tiredness did not assist me in a rapid departure to Dreamland.

I lay there on my wheat-coloured carpet on my back, hands folded across my abdomen, wide eyes staring at the ceiling. I felt like a caricature of someone who couldn’t sleep. Not only was my brain careening about (metaphorically of course!) thinking about my Saturday, but it was also beginning to worry about the effect of sleeping on the floor upon my Sunday. I have some AP tests coming up, you see. I’ve already taken two, but there are three fat ones still looming imminently upon the horizon of my life. Granted they are the last ones I will ever take, but they are still succeeding in stressing me out. Mainly AP Biology, which is on Monday. Tomorrow. Which means that today (Sunday) is the final day I have to study. Which is why I was lying on my floor, unable to sleep.

Now, as I mentioned having insomnia, I have many times experienced the viciously cyclical conundrum of worrying about worrying about not getting enough sleep:

You’ll be lying in bed, trying to fall asleep, and you think you’ve conquered your whirling thoughts. You’ve almost reached that cozy dozy spot between consciousness and not, that place that tips you into sleep, when you realize that you ARE still awake and have not succeeded in fully attaining sleep yet. You’re suddenly not sleepy anymore. You look at the clock and realize that it’s after midnight. You try to ignore the time. You toss and turn for a while longer until you give in to terrible and desperate curiosity, and you peer through squinting, defensive eyelashes at the yellow, digital glow. It’s been another hour. Blankets are kicked off. Then they’re pulled back on. More rolling over. Another clock glance. Before you can stop it your mind has already done the math and knows exactly how few hours of sleep you will get if you fall asleep within the next fifteen minutes. Because this has happened so many times before, your now aching head begins to realize what will be happening next, likely within mere minutes. And then you hear it. One of the worst echoes ear canals could experience. Echoes that symbolize fatigue, inability to concentrate, and soreness of muscles that will plague you the next day. It is the sound of the next morning’s newspaper. An awful slap upon every driveway as a midnight driver flings the rolled up papers out the window. Even had you not stolen that last glare at the clock’s beaming face this sound would tell you that it was either just before or just after 3am. A desolate and worry-filled hour. One that declares “If I’m awake to see 4am I will literally not be able to wake up in the morning.” It’s the hour that taunts you with your own ability to count your hours of sleep on one hand.

Since I have personally had the above-described experience, it was… interesting to have it compounded by a lack of bed. Perhaps this wasn’t the best choice of project for me. Alas.

Back to what I was saying prior to my description of a nightmare (just kidding though because you have to be ASLEEP to have those..). I have had the experience of worrying about not getting enough sleep keeping me awake at night. But this time I was worrying about a different facet of the problem, a different cause of sleeplessness. This made me feel somewhat more connected to other people who were trying to sleep without beds as I was. Perhaps it was wrong of me to rant about not even being able to sleep IN a bed while there are so many who don’t even have beds to complain about sleeping in.

Bedless: Recap Night One

Hello. Good morning.

Yesterday after my first post I immediately went out, and didn’t return until rather late last night. Or incredibly early this morning. However you prefer to see it. My point in mentioning this is that since I was not home, I was not confronted with the nonuse of my bed. Let me elaborate. Had I been home, it’s likely that I would have wanted to read on my bed, or (gasp) get homework out of the way early and work on my bed, but I wouldn’t have been allowed to do that per the parameters of this project. So I haven’t yet had to deal with daytime prohibition of bed contact.

As I mentioned, I did not get home until pretty late last night. As I got ready for bed (the very verbage of which highlights my lack thereof) I was very much looking forward to slipping under the covers, letting my body sort of melt into the mattress. I’m sure you know the exact feeling I am describing. However, after brushing my teeth and washing my face (with running water from a faucet – another thing that the homeless do not have regular access to) I entered my bedroom. I sort of paused in the doorway as I looked at my bed and remembered that I would not be getting to sleep in it. The tiredness of my muscles and brain suddenly seemed amplified as it reverberated against my bed’s wooden headboard and bounced back to hit me in the face. Yes, I’m complaining.

I grabbed my folded fleece blanket and let it fall to the floor at the foot of my bed. I opened a drawer in my dresser and pulled out three large t-shirts, and also tossed them onto the floor. My room is relatively small and mostly filled with furniture, so I don’t have much floor space. There’s probably only room for two grown humans to fully stretch out in the space available. I lay down, folded shirts below my head, too-short blanket not completely covering me, and I tried to fall asleep. I was expecting to be awake and trying to sleep for a long time but before I knew it I was awake again. Although I did wake up much earlier than I normally would have. Likely because I wasn’t as comfortable as I normally would have been.

So far I don’t feel like I have gotten quite the experience that I want out of this exercise. We shall see if I gain more of it as the days go by.

Tomorrow I shall return.

Bedless

Hello!

For my experiential journalism project I have decided to go bedless for a week. That is to say that I will not sit on my bed, do homework on my bed, take naps in my bed or sleep in my bed at night. The reason I chose this for my project was in order to recreate an aspect of homelessness. Given the many natural disasters of late – earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes – there are many people throughout the world, as well as within our own country, who are newly homeless and who do not have the luxuries of their own beds or private bedrooms to themselves. I wanted to put myself in their shoes.

I acknowledge that my project is not nearly close to real homelessness, as I will be sleeping on a (thinly) carpeted floor in a relatively warm house, so I will also be removing other sleeping amenities. I will only allow myself one blanket, and am not permitted the use of pillows. I may ball up a couple articles of clothing for use as such, but I will not be sleeping with an actual pillow.

I’ll be embarking upon this endeavour tonight. I’ll be back tomorrow to report.

The Message.

Today as I was leaving school, I was walking through the drizzle-soaked student parking lot when I noticed something strange. A baby-sized pink and white Croc sandal was lying upon the asphalt, sans its partner, lost among the elderly cars of high school students. Not only was it odd to me to see a lonely baby shoe in the parking lot of a high school, but it was also the type of shoe that made the situation even stranger. Crocs are simply incomprehensible shoes to begin with, even without encountering a random miniature one sitting solo in the student lot of a high school. I found this so peculiar that I knelt to take a picture of it.

Solitary baby Croc.

I drove home, thinking nothing more of the shoe. I returned to school through heavier rain and thick grey to retrieve my brother.  I left the parking lot for the second time, still without the shoe on my mind. Little did I know what was about to occur. After I had driven the equivalent of three or four blocks away from my school I saw something tiny and white half-submerged in a puddle in the middle of my lane, about to be run over by my obese car.

“ANOTHER BABY CROC!” I yelled as I began to laugh hysterically. Now, if I were my brother I would have been alarmed if I’d heard my sister scream “a baby Croc!” let alone another baby Croc.

I couldn’t fathom how the same object, quite possibly the absolute randomest of objects, could have appeared twice in front of me on the same day.  I questioned whether I was being followed by an invisible, shoeless child. Or whether I was being led somewhere, but instead of a bread-crumb trail I was experiencing a … Baby Croc trail. I really began to wonder where the child was whose shoes these were. And what on earth she or he was doing without shoes on such a rainy day as today. And how in the world the shoes had come to be separated and how they’d ended up where they were. I contemplated whether the universe was trying to send me some kind of message, and if so, what kind of universal entity communicates through the use of Baby Crocs?

Combined.

Featherbrained.

Frazz.led.

Winter

Today tells us almost

Content

wrapped in the sky

Just you and i

There’s a new building. on my wall

East.

The season finally began. And with crunch.

Absolutely solid wall type grey.

Da capo.

There’s something in the air

That cannot be seen.

Eyes stare at, into,

Infinitesimal and

innumerable

black holes in silver

But cannot grasp how

anything escapes.

The circles are much too small

For anything to pass through

Yet there is something in the air

Perceived not through sight

Not through touch or scent

Felt in bodies but not in nerves within

Skin.

What really occurs?

Waves upon liquid,

Hammers of length

Upon heavy metal. blocks

Which can’t be

Pulled away by

Stirrup-ed riders

Who still remain

as blinded.

Yet they know.

And blindness is not

Equated with

Ignorance.

Sunrise.

Times of day run together.

September 30, 2010. The end of a month.

T

But don't really.

Dust

Chalk

Chalk dust

Blue dust

Dress dust

Old dust

Simpler dust

Simpler times

Becoming harder

Changing dust

Different blue

In a wrapping

Remnant blue

Systematic blue

Nomenclature type

Blue

Cross-hatched and marked

Symbolic blue

Trash, trashcan

Streaked

Brush strokes, lines

Of blue

Paint blue

Crusty blue

Rusty blue

Dusty blue

Dust of a revolution(ary)

Blue

The systematic

Is no longer

The impressionistic

Takes hold

Of blue

So many functions

Interchangeable and metallic

Things change

Colours

Reused

Faded

New

Built fresh

From scratch

And blended

Blended with

The old and dusty

Alone wandering

Covered in layers

Soon to be blown off

Away away

Signs posted

Glued with dust

Glued for eyes

To be glued to

Pale you pale

Don’t let yourself

Be trashed

Like the untrashed trash

Around the trashcan

You are the fresh

Let make your own

Dust.