December 20, Siesta

This morning I woke up with with more purpose than usual. I felt I had the energy to drive myself to the clinic.  On the way to town, we marveled at a rainbow which formed a circle, interrupted by white layers of cloud, around the raising sun.

I met my new family doctor who is a happy talker and whose name contains the word hope. In Spanish. For a reason that I cannot know yet, I felt good about this change. He is a Filipino born and raised in Winnipeg, and looks just like a Japanese sumo wrestler. 

For the last few days I have been more tired than usual. Years ago a friend gave me, as a present, a book called De la fatigue. A philosophical approach, on which I am forced to reflect every day lately. There is something uncanny about how this state has become my most pressing symptom and concern. Somewhat akin to idleness, if I understand correctly how the latter works. One formulates all kinds of projects in one's mind, and they may be of the most exciting nature: write a blog, why not start writing a book for that matter? Order some Christmas presents on line, why not go to the mall and buy them yourself, after careful consideration? Finish that painting which has been waiting for a few months now, why not actually arrange the new atelier that you have decided to set on the second floor? Practice the piano, why not print the fifty page Schubert partition waiting to be measured? Set the Christmas decorations, and so on. The list is unending. And yet, nothing can be done, or should I say, so little as to be almost nothing. As soon as I have practiced the piano for twenty minutes, or laid out the colors, my eyes are asking to close. I need to rest, and that means, sleep. A day without sleep will only add more need of sleep to the next.

In order to offer some amusement to our friend who visited last week, we went to see Aida at the Met, which, thanks to modern technology, is accessible at a theater near you. I thought I would give a try to an activity I used to enjoy before my illness. The theater seats are extremely comfortable, much more so than those of an opera house, and the public, in keeping with a dying form of culture, white haired and never more than fifty heads at all. These days grey hair allows me to fit in quite well. Colin is the odd one out, even if a bit of a bold spot is quite welcome in such company. I am sorry to report that I slept through most of the performance, and while it was our game, for me to wake Colin up when, at the end of the work day, we used to go to the opera in Toronto, things have changed and it is for him to keep me awake, early Saturday afternoon.

It is a difficult feeling to describe. Nothing really hurts. One is to simply go to rest. Nothing dramatic. And yet, this fatigue gives one the impression that life itself is shrinking. I have always been a great defender of siestas, and we used to practice it gladly in our small family, between myself and my parents. On Sunday afternoons, the only day when we were all at home at the same time, we used to close the door of the apartment with determination, and we would almost have hanged a sign on it, like the surrealists used to, which would have said, "poets at work". The siesta so much more enjoyable when some relative or acquaintance would commit the error of calling during those secret hours. The more they rang, or knocked, rang and knocked and shouted, thinking it impossible for us not to hear, being that we lived in such a small apartment, the more we enjoyed pretending we did not hear, we were not there. We never answered, but rejoiced in that exquisite possibility of claiming sleeping time, of steeling sleeping time from those who busied themselves with uncalled-for visits.

Those days are long gone, as my master Proust would say. Never again will I and my parents hide in our respective bedrooms, pretending we're not at home, in order to steal a siesta against the better judgement of people in need of things to say and do, places to go to. Nowadays nobody calls unannounced, visits are planned months in advance, one simply cannot play Oblomov for the sake of sweet sleep. Maybe this is why I find this manifestation of my illness so difficult to bear. This sleep is not stolen for its gifts, for the afternoon dreams which tell more, and more vividly, than the nighttime ones. This is rather becoming the main condition, and while part of it still retains, to my joy, some of those qualities of the in-between vigil and sleep, the accumulation of too many hours of sleep leads one into more ominous unrest.

Whatever the hour of rest will be for you, now that the holidays are coming down the chimney, we wish you good company and sweet afternoons. May the old year end in good cheer, and the new bring you the joys of sunnier dreams.  



















P.S. Snow came down last night and branches bend heavy, blocking the path. On the highway, we met men hunting for coyotes from their parked truck. The dogs are doing the work and satellite tracking devices show their progression, while Rocky goes mad over this intrusion and unusual fuss.
The air is still with snowflakes. From here where winter has finally arrived we wish you again happy, joyful holidays. May all good coyotes be safe, or land safely onto coyote paradise.

yesterday

today

what's with all that barking?