Thursday, May 17, 2012

"Every Single Night" Fiona Apple

My relationship with sleep is the worst relationship in my life.  The tiptoeing around, the avoidance, the uneasiness that accompanies every engagement.  Will it be like last night's?  Will there be a sudden detail that springs up from the deeper parts of today's rehashing?  Will it be restorative?  Will I remember my dream?  Will it be enough?  Will the consecutive nights of deprivation further deepen these once indiscernible wrinkles?

Will I require a book for reading?  Or a piece of paper to write on?  Or exhuming an ancient experience--perhaps when I took a beautiful nap in that hammock in Montanita?  Or an imagining of a deeper level of protection:  curled up inside a killer whale, breathing in the warm viscosity of its jewel colored amniotic fluid, numbed to the pressures and stimuli of an outside world by a generous layer of blubber?

Perhaps a jungle and this song.  On an island.

The suddenness of appearing in this context introduces a mystery whose unraveling would otherwise be irresistible.  But I need to figure out my way out or just my way.  The rapid assessment of my vicinity under this moonlight.  The warmth and saltiness of the wind.