I got the news I got into graduate school this past week but I’ve been too sleepy to truly let that sink in (more on that later) but maybe the knowledge that I’ll be returning to the northeast is where this very green illustration came from.

I try to find the topic of these newsletters by examining what I’ve been delighted by or obsessing over recently but when I went to brainstorm this time, I was coming up short. I haven’t been reading much, haven’t been thinking about much, I’ve been listening to a lot of old folk and country but don’t have the energy to do any research on that. And I realized I’ve been like this because I’ve been exhausted because I haven’t been sleeping well and what I have been truly obsessed with is my sleep schedule. So here is my meditation on the land of nod.

love note 03: sleep, insomnia, dreams + hypnagogia

I bolt awake to the sound of a crash, get up and slowly open my door and check the darkness of the house where I live alone. After a quick sweep, of course, there are no intruders, no disturbances, so I get back into bed and pull the covers up, now with the knowledge that it had been an auditory hallucination. I’d been having them with some regularity since my car was broken into a few weeks prior. Bangs, crashes, opening doors. They’d wake me up, always sounding so real.

Recently, I asked a friend who I knew also has problems with sleep if they’d ever had anything similar happen and they taught me a term I hadn’t been familiar with: hypnagogic hallucinations. My friend’s hallucinations were more frequently visual ones and they truly sounded like something out of horror films. Figures sitting on their bed, a mattress threatening to crash down from the ceiling, all manner of faces and visages. We commiserated that it always felt like it had been a long time since we’d fallen asleep when we were awoken but it was almost always exactly 30 minutes after we’d gone to bed.

The hypnagogic state is that in-between space of consciousness. Not yet asleep, not fully awake, a sort of trippy state that allows for these sorts of hallucinations. Some scientists think this is the period where the brain starts to dismantle the models and concepts we use to interpret the world around us and so we are able to have experiences that are not sifted through our normal mental filter.

Floating in a neon river, a translucent butterfly tickling your fingertip, green hills of velvet, a turtle with a cat’s head, then suddenly pink pyramids.

It’s funny that the state that so frequently blocked me from deeper sleep has also become my savior.

Afternoons when all of my energy is robbed of me but there are still things to be done. How can I motivate a return to the computer after lunch? Caffeine will just rob me of sleep that upcoming night… A recommendation from my sister-in-law was to try yoga nidra, a meditation practice that puts you into that in-between state, hypnagogia. The first time I tried it, my body tingled all over when the instructor repeated one of the phrases three times. “Now focus your attention on your whole body. Your whole body. Your whole body.” It was like a high, it felt so good. Yoga nidra can be used for sleep and rest, but also for creativity. Wouldn’t you know that dissolving your concepts of the world and allowing yourself to think unfiltered would also be good for creating?

When I’m in a period of good sleep, I forget completely what the bad cycles are like. I tell people I never have problems with sleep but even then, I insist upon getting at least 8 hours. How many times have I had a friend beg me to stay out just a little longer? I found this old piece of writing back in the days of living in New York: “I hate when people expect me to be a human after nine o’clock. I like my sleep. I like my bed. I hate commuting past ten.” What can I say, I’m a lark.

Remember when people bragged about how little sleep they got? The badge of honor freshman year. Do people still think like that? That having so much going on you don’t prioritize your sleep is something to be proud of?

I dream such vivid dreams and love to analyze them. How many years did I interpret my dreams of teeth falling out as a symbol of sexual frustration before coming out? Lately: Putting toppings on my frozen yogurt. I’m in a bikini. Someone comes to hug me and kiss me on the cheek. I touch my face. The terror of realizing I’m not wearing a mask.

At least I know the mask nightmares are probably fairly universal.

A dream that’s stuck with me since I was ten: searching for my birth mother, knowing she was in trouble, going from place to place with my father in a prehistoric-type setting. Finally, find her as her clothed skeleton falls to her knees in the middle of a blizzard. A dream I can’t even begin to interpret.

But we all know dreams aren’t interesting to anyone but the dreamer. I’ll still keep mining them for a peek at my unconscious and as a fountain for inspiration. That is, if I’ve slept enough and am able to think properly. I’m starting to have more nights where I sleep all the way through the night, though between writing the first draft of this and the second I found myself tossing and turning at 2 am and cursing myself. If I weren’t so obsessive would I have better sleep? Probably.

I wish you sweet dreams and uninterrupted slumber.

Some sleep remedies

I figured if I’m going to wax on about insomnia I may as well give some things that have worked for me.

Bedtime routines: Definitely no right answer here but I get my best sleep when I’m consistent with what time I go to bed and when I have a wind-down routine before trying to close my eyes. In the past, I’ve done tiger balm and lavender spray on my pillow. Right now, I do an extra-long skincare routine, turn on my aromatherapy diffuser and, as always, read a bit before turning off the light. I’ve also been trying to put the screens away after nine.

Melatonin: You probably already know about this one. I’ve been halving the dose to try to avoid morning time grogginess.

So many bedtime story podcasts and meditations: Also here’s my go-to resource for yoga nidras.

And I quit drinking…an extreme measure but as you can see, for someone as obsessed with sleep as I am, I took it and haven’t looked back.

Readings

Poetry Nook

The Noisiness of Sleep
by Ada Limón

Careful of what I carry
in my head and in my hollow,
I’ve been a long time worried
about grasping infinity
and coaxing some calm
out of the softest part
of the pins and needles
of me. I’d like to take a nap.
But not a nap that’s eternal,
a nap where you wake up
having dreamt of falling, but
you’ve only fallen into
an ease so unknown to you
it looks like a new country.
Let me slip into a life less messy.
Let me slip into your sleeve.
Be very brave about my
trespass, the plan is simple—
the plan is the clock tower
and the lost crow. It’ll be rich.
We’ll live forever. Every moon
will be a moon of surrender
and lemon seeds. You there,
standing up in the crowd,
I’m not proud. The stove
can’t boast of the meal.
All this to say—consider this,
with your combination of firefly
and train whistle, consider this,
with your maze and steel,
I want to be the rough clothes
you can’t sleep in.

Currently reading:

Eros, the Bittersweet by Anne Carson

“But the boundaries of time and glance and I love you are only aftershocks of the main, inevitable boundary that creates Eros: the boundary of flesh and self between you and me. And it is only, suddenly, at the moment when I would dissolve that boundary, I realize I never can.”

Soundscapes

I really slept on the new Glass Animals album (pun a little bit intended) but now I’ve finally listened and it’s on repeat. I talked last time about the benefits of having a playlist you can dance to and I keep putting this album on and dancing in the weirdest ways. Feels like a Garden State moment every time.

I’ve updated my website so you can see more of my work there if you’re looking for it.

Sweet dreams and hope you are staying well.

x,

k