Time is the river on which the leaves of our thoughts are carried into oblivion.
Doris Lessing – The Golden Notebook
How do you sleep?
How do you sleep at night?John Lennon
For me, one of the biggest headaches of the present lockdown is insomnia. I don’t have a problem with getting to sleep: by 10.00pm I’m ready for bed, after ten pages of a book I’m ready to put my light out and within five minutes of that I’m fast asleep.
No, the problem for me isn’t getting to sleep; it’s staying asleep that I struggle with. By four or five I’m wide awake. On better days I can struggle for an hour or so and then manage to drift back into a very shallow sleep until six or six-thirty. If I’m unlucky even that eludes me and I have to give up and drag myself from bed at five-thirty or six.
I’m very physically active in the day and I don’t drink caffeine in the evening. I’ve tried forcing myself to stay up later, I always leave my phone downstairs, I’ve tried drinking alcohol and not drinking alcohol and I’ve started to practice meditation. But still the same result: awake with the birds at four or five.
I think I know what the problem is: like so many other people at the moment I have a head full of worries and anxieties about the COVID-19 crisis. As well as concerns about the world in general I have specific worries about the difficulties faced by my kids, grandkids and my wife, who works for the NHS. In the day I can just about handle all of this, mainly by keeping myself really busy. But at night, once I’ve had four or five hours sleep to wipe away the worst of my exhaustion, the anxieties come back up to the surface and haunt me.
I’m not unique, I think most people have these kind of worries. Some people, too many people, have things much, much worse at the moment. So in many ways I’m very fortunate. All the same, I just wish I could get a good night’s sleep now and again.
In Greek mythology the god of sleep is known as Hypnos. The Lethe, the river of forgetfulness, flows through the cave system in which he resides. Charles Baudelaire wrote about the Lethe in his Fleurs du Mal. Anyone who has suffered with insomnia will recognise the desperation evoked by Baudelaire in this poem. He writes of a longing for sleep that is so overwhelming that he is willing to embrace it whatever the cost:
I wish to sleep! to sleep rather than live!
In a slumber doubtful as death,
I shall remorselessly cover with my kisses
Your lovely body polished like copper.
To bury my subdued sobbing
Nothing equals the abyss of your bed,
Potent oblivion dwells upon your lips
And Lethe flows in your kisses.
Picture of the River Dee at Holt ©Bobby Seal
