O, most irritating of gods, ye who plague our sleep with interruptions, your reach is infinite, your powers innumerable. All grudging praise to you who reigns supreme, whether bestowing joy or affliction: words gushing forth from the fountain of inspired dreams, the urge to pee after a meal punctuated with strawberry wine, the text message from a teen at 2 AM, the hot flash, the chronic worry over bills, lawsuits, the percussion of barking dogs, the brazen siren, the neighbor’s car alarm, the newspaper rattling the storm door glass, the yowling cats.
Lo, we bow down before your splendid, boundless arsenal.
And so, after the midnight meditation, the 1 AM skim of the New York Times Blackberry edition, the languid 2 AM sex, the 3 AM shower, the 4 AM dog-walk in darkness, the 4:30 laundry, there cometh the 5 AM coffee. And therefore, Selah, I find myself here, zipped into my car at the edge of Lake Michigan.
You have brought me hence, oh god of sleeplessness, to worship at this tireless, restless inland sea. Vaster than spring, creek or pond. Clouds resolve along the horizon, wide bolsters of wan pink and heather. Birds flit unheralded, only utter battle cries as they resume the hunt, reconnoiter over the sapphire water with its turbulent facets.
The lake respires: rhythmic, deep exhalations across the sand, a music not unlike my husband’s breathing device. The shush comforts oddly, like a CD of the ocean, not quite white noise, but pastel perhaps—a soundtrack for yoga class, for dolphin colonies and hospital wards scented with Desitin.
The sun dallies even as the sky pales up. Luminescent contrails dart north. Giddy leaves rattle and dance in the breeze. But like me, they, in the heat of the day, will go limp and dull. When young mothers pushing strollers vie for shade below their boughs, exhausted from their own nightly crusades: diapers, nursing, nightmares—yet more evidence of your unblinking dominion—I will lock my office and forward my calls. I will unfurl a camping pad and dim the fluorescents. Heedless of lawyers in the high-rise opposite my own, I will nestle on the floor and curl against a pillow, arrange my forest green fleece blanket as lovingly as an altar, to curry favor with that weaker, more elusive deity: slumber.
While savoring my future nap, I wait. As the sun pops over the horizon—as sudden as a finger puppet, as unflinching as a spotlight, as naked and aflame as lust, I give thanks for the grace of clamorous nights, for the cruel favor of misery and inadvertent glory.
