rice sleep

The only time lingering in bed seems appealing to me is on weekday mornings, usually with rain is falling outside, and the immediate prospect of the coming work day looms like an iceberg in the darkness. Then the bed seems irrepressibly soft, and the prospect of more sleep nearly narcotic. The stretch of time between that moment and the return home seems dismayingly long, with insurmountable bullshit sandwiched in-between. At that time to my tired brain, nothing seems more appealing than climbing back in and pursuing the lazy contentment of intermittent consciousness mingled with dark obscure dreaming, with the blinds shut tight against the morning. After hitting snooze 3 or 4 times I’ll haul my carcass out of bed sadly, wondering why I don’t at least linger while I can, on days off from work. Bed is the place to be and I don’t take full advantage.

But then the weekend comes and I’m up at my usual time, early-ish. 7 is standard, 8 is sleeping in. It seems the bed is not that comfortable after all. And I’m not pleasantly dreaming; my worries have just taken on distorted new hypnagogic forms.

So it’s usual to get up early, and very odd to return to bed at any point in the day, although in my heart of hearts I think Spain has the right idea with the notion of siesta. Mid-afternoon you can laze about for a spell, touching base with friends or books or the bedsheets. It breaks up the day into manageable blocks and lets you recover your best self so that you can go hard into the night. It’s a civilized notion. Not just in Spain, a lot of countries go by it, primarily the hotter ones.

In Bengal the word which describes the concept is bhat-ghum, literally meaning “rice-sleep”, a nap after lunch.

Since coming back from our little excursion through B.C. my remaining vacation days have been one long rice sleep. I don’t know why but I can’t get out of bed, at least not enthusiastically. Everything is boring to me and I feel like I’m sleeping out of self-defense. It seems I’m also riding a wave of old bad habits. I get out of bed only to eat – oatmeal and coffee and some soup I made yesterday, better than Pringles but nevertheless I am overstuffed and as I eat I have that old dangerous insatiability. (Why oh why can’t I be one of those depressed types with no appetite? Depression doesn’t make me waste away; if anything I come off a blue spell looking more robust than before.) Then crawling back to bed, uncomfortably full, to dream in short bursts of unsettling stuff like climbing steep, uncrestable hills.

This dreary state is boring and I don’t understand it. Is it bringing about revitalization, a better me? Or is it just a waste of time? What self-respecting organism would allow this to happen to itself? Is this progress? But even in this tedious state I still retain a remnant of newfound good habits. I go to the gym, just with less motivation, and I’m still writing…my laptop is there under the covers with me, going complacently into sleep mode shortly after I do, and snapping smartly back into my waiting word document whenever I regain consciousness and start hitting the keys. So maybe this modicum of proactiveness can be considered progress, although I wish it took larger strides. In the olden days it would have been infinite processed-cheese sandwiches, closed curtains and the oblivion of old books rather than throwing anything productive into the mix. At least it’s oatmeal this time and not millions of cookies, although I still feel like 5 pounds of bullshit in a 10 pound bag…

Abbreviating this post as my partner is home from work and is mercifully dragging my ass out the door for a walk in the sunshine.