Sleep, the Temptress and the tempted. She doesn’t come easily for me these days. There were times when sleep was a blessing, refuge of the depressed. Then there are dreams. I don’t always remember them. But lately, they’ve been restless and disturbed. The things in which I’ve put my trust are rocky and double-edged.
Last night, I woke up at 1:30am, restless and worried. The cats were tossing and turning, too. Kiev and Chaco had been to the vet, Dr. Tiffany, in the late afternoon before supper, hot vegetable soup. Kiev was a doll. Chaco, with his oily black coat, howled the way Siamese do, lashed out, hissed, and threatened to bite. But he is harmless, a survivor of abusive previous owners.
The fairy thin vet assistant grabbed him by the scruff, then tied on the black muzzle with pink shoestring laces that Chaco ripped off with a single paw in two seconds flat.
Domestic animals may not remember short-term inconsistencies or the emotional ups and downs of their owners. But they remember long-term abuse. It’s stored in their bodies. And as much as Liz tried to comfort Chaco, he sat through Kiev’s temperature check and yearly shots, then dove into old anxiety, emerald eyes splayed wide, as she placed him on the cold stainless steel table.
Mr. Stripeypants had gone to the vet earlier this year. So he stayed at home. Waited, nostrils to the windowpane. And when Kiev and Chaco returned, he sniffed and smelled and growled at them. The scent of squirty needles and alcohol and oozing medicine.
And that ties in with the book I am almost finished with, Ann Patchett’s Truth & Beauty. She races through the latter chapters of her friend Lucy’s addicted and chaotic frenzy. And I think of the ways that addictions plague artists and writers. Recovery offers hope. Addiction cycles around again. It’s inevitable.
Writers go to places that others don’t want to go. They are willing to look at the good, the bad, the ugly of human existence and write about it, so the details of our living history are not forgotten. And I wonder why it is I can’t sleep.
I dream of reams of money floating down from the sky and read how Ann and Lucy had more than enough money with New York parties and scholarly literature awards. A temporary balm, it didn’t matter in the end.
Writing will not make you happy. Or save you from anything. It only offers the comfort of a moment of captured truth – your truth. But back to sleep. How did I stray so far off track? I don’t count sheep.
Kiev and Chaco finally got to sleep and I rocked the bed, boing, boing, turning over and over, leaning up softly against the warm back and hands that sheltered and slowed the spinning in my head. Finally, I grabbed a warm finger, turned over on my side, crawled into a fetal position, and leapt into the next dream.
I was standing in front of a classroom, talking to a group of students about how writing will not save you; I was rattled, a skewed version of art imitating life.
And then, buzzzzzzzzzzzzz, the alarm with the microchip that connects to a satellite clock somewhere in the snowy mountains of Colorado beeped through my brain. And I rose to the dark Fall Minnesota morning.
-posted on red Ravine, Tuesday, October 9th, 2007
-from Topic post, Writing Topic – Counting Sheep
Once I stayed at a friend’s apartment when I moved to a new city. She rescued street cats, and I had about five of them jumping on me and rocking the house all night. That’s what your kitties sound like they were doing.
It’s interesting that you dream about telling your students writing won’t save them. Sometimes I wonder if when we talk to someone in our dreams, if it’s our unconscious or preconscious minds trying to tell us something we’re not admitting.
At times I DO think writing will save me, even though I know it’s an illusion, or a fantasy, or a desire.
Great writing – you really got me to thinking.
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Dr. Tiffany needs a new assistant…plain and simple. One that better understands frightened animals. This comes from a woman with a lifetime of catching, medicating and training… crazy, wild, abused and abandon feline. Next time, have Liz bring an old towel for that awful table…preferably one with a familiar scent.
As far as not sleeping…my remedy…get up, take a very hot shower to raise that body temperature and immediately get back under those covers. Works for me QM 😉
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Hi QM. I had a restless night last night, too. And now I’m pooped. Off to sleep land. Hope you, Kiev, Chaco, Mr. Stripeypants, Liz all sleep soundly tonight.
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mariacristina, the cats have calmed down quite a bit since I wrote this. Although Mr. Stripeypants seems to be the odd one out, smell-wise. He hasn’t adjusted to the other two smelling like the vet yet.
I do think our dreams are mostly about us – communication between the upper and lower worlds. It’s good to have a reality check once in a while. But there are days I’d like to go back to the idealism I had about 5 years ago about writing. 8)
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Heather, I forgot the towel this time. I did bring one last time for Pants and it seemed to help. BTW, how many animals to you have these days?
I had not heard about the hot shower to raise the body temp. I’ll have to try it next time.
ybonesy, I slept better last night. But still restless. I went to bed early. The darkness comes sooner and sooner in the evenings. I’ve got to get the motorcycle into storage this weekend. There was snow up in Bemidji yesterday. Brrrrrr.
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I currently have 5 QM. They live in an large atrium room with a beautiful Renaissance mural at one end ( silly me…I thought it would be my special room). They’re like a dysfunctional fur family. Mavis is crazy so no one would adopt her. We taught her how to retrieve a ball. Jude and Junior (who’s quite cross eyed) were both quite wild but are doing wonderfully. Avree and Eden were injured and abandon, now quite fat, lazy and happy. We lost Harlow and Malou, both skinny and abandon, last year…but they had a wonderful, spoiled rotten, new life up to the end. I sound like one of those crazy cat women, I know…It’s quite the joke among my friends…but I can’t even kill a spider…let alone watch any animal suffer. I don’t ask for trouble…they just seem to find me. I guess it’s just meant to be. It helps to have a patient husband. 🙂
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It only offers the comfort of a moment of captured truth – your truth.
And one more thing. The chance to have someone else experience and understand it.
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I’m with you on the sleep thing — I could count on one hand the number of nights I’ve gotten a good eight hours in the last five months.
Writing, for me, is often an exercise in sorting things out, organizing, and working through things; sometimes, that gives it a satisfaction. It’s almost tangible.
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Heather, wow. Mavis, Jude, Junior, Avree, & Eden. Great that you are giving them a new lease on life. They sound like some Cool Kats. 8)
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jason, good point. I guess that’s why we blog isn’t it? And maybe even why we write at all. The community and sharing.
ben, writing is a sorting out for me, too. Especially writing practice where I can write anything, the worst crap in America, and it doesn’t matter. Within all that, the good stuff is buried.
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Hmmm… Seems that writing and dreaming can serve similar, maybe complementary purposes — the chance to sort things through, figure them out.
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I just did my first writing practice on sleep. Wasn’t sure how to post it.—-Novelique
http://theindividualvoice.blogspot.com/2007/10/sleep-never-comes.html
the individual voice: Sleep Never Comes
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pmousse, dreams and writing, the subconscious in action. Which are dreams, which are reality? And does it matter? I’m doing so much sorting these days….
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tiv, thank you for writing with us on the Counting Sheep Writing Topic. It’s so great that you’ve jumped into practice. I’ll add a link to your piece in the Counting Sheep Topic post as well. I just read your practice and I see it was written by Novelique, the Short Story Writer. Are these Blogsta-Sistas different personae or separate individual people? I am curious.
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Writing may not save me, but if I am smart enough to pay attention to what I write, the reasons for my damnation may become more clear.
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That’s so true. And hopefully there will be no regrets because you’ll know yourself so fully. Well, that parts probably not the case. I have some regrets for how I am, and even though I know I’m like that and I know I wish I weren’t, I can’t seem to change.
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yb, me, too. So many parts I can’t seem to change, no matter how hard I try.
david, clarity is one of the best reasons to write. All that sorting makes things much more clear.
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