My body is fighting me. No. My brain is fighting my body. No. My brain knows I need to wake up and my body is ready to wake up, but my brain doesn't want to get up, nor does my body. Wait. My body knows I need to wake up and my brain is ready to wake up, but my body doesn't want to get up. Wait.
It's 12:45.
It's 12:45 in the morning.
It's 12:45.
New perspective. It's only 12:45. If I lived in a different world, at 12:45 on a Thursday, I would probably be somewhere drunk thinking about how early it is and how the night has just begun.
I don't live in a different world. I live in a world where we try to go to bed shortly after Tahlia and Asher have gone to bed. We live in a world that is divided into two to possibly three and a half hour segments. Sleep is elusive. Well not really elusive. Sleep is easily found. Often we find it in the middle of a story for Tahlia. For a moment, we close our eyes, confident in our ability to continue the story while resting our eyes. The confidence is shattered each time we realize that this poor girl, who was thoroughly enjoying a story leading up to the climax where Sam and Mya and Esme and Briana and Tahlia are about to finally find the dragon who lives in the hiding tree who has a room that is the embodiment of The Little Gym, but who is now possibly listening to the half formed words of a dozing parent who is now possibly explaining how the lesson plan will not work with the current class because all of the children in the class, including Seth are unwilling to empty the grate in the back of the classroom. Well, that is possibly what is said because, since the story teller is sleeping, it is difficult to know exactly what was, or is said, since the last part was definitely seen; whether or not actual words were communicated is unclear since Tahlia just sits quietly. When we start, and awake to find ourselves no longer in whatever reality our sleep deprived brain created, but actually in Tahlia's room attempting to tell a simple story about a dragon to our daughter, we ask Tahlia if the story became confusing at the end. "Yeah," is her reply. We start off again, from where we think we left off, and Tahlia, and Mya, and Sam, and Esme, and Briana have a great time with the dragon.
And in this world, it is 12:45, and I am trying to tell my body to stay awake.
And I'm up. I apply the T2. Even though I have numb hands, the T2 is not a challenge. He is really sleeping when Mommy gives him to me. There is no struggling. He's nothing more than a lump. A bump on a pickle. A peanut, as Tahlia likes to call him. A quick grunt is heard, but he is quickly mummified. The T2 holds.
And I'm up. My brain is fighting. My body is fighting. Again, I become confused against whom each is fighting. Shouldn't my brain be fighting to stay awake? Wouldn't that mean that my body is fighting to go to sleep? But it seems that my brain is fighting to go to sleep, and my body is fighting to stay awake.
It's 12:45.
I'm rocking now. Standing and rocking. He is quiet. Tahlia is quiet. Yesterday, after I put him to sleep, I went into Tahlia's room because she was awake. I don't live in that world where 12:45 is early, but sometimes it is the beginning of the night, and the night is young.
Her molars are coming in, and it's 12:45.
I'm still rocking, and it's raining. This is a new thing, the rain. It really isn't raining, just in our room. You think I'm losing the fight don't you. You think I'm in one of those hallucinations where I'm not sure where I am, don't you? No. It's raining, or so the noise maker on the floor would have Asher believe. It's very soothing, the rain. One of them, my body or my brain, wants me to sit in the rocking chair. One wants me to sit in the rocking chair and turn my face towards the heavens to allow the rain to pour down and drench me. I think it is my brain that realizes that if I sit in the rocking chair, which ever is fighting to go to sleep will win. I think it is my brain that keeps me standing. Either way, I'm still dry.
It's funny what you think about when your brain and your body are simultaneously attempting to fight each other to go back to sleep. I'm thinking about The Life of Pi, a novel I recently completed. Fascinating. My students read it for an independent book project; thus, I read it. I also read a critical article on the novel the other day in which the issue of cannibalism is discussed. Since there is the possibility that Pi became a cannibal, this critic discussed how, when in the survival mode, the human brain accepts cannibalism. I don't have it all straight right now, but it has something to do with the body shutting down unnecessary functions. I can't remember clearly, probably because it is 12:45. But it could also be because of the abundance of other 12:45's as well as 2:45's and 4:45's after which Asher decides there really isn't any reason to go back to sleep, I have become so tired that the acquiring of some unnecessary information, such as what happens to the human body when it is starving, becomes muddled as it enters the brain. Anyways, I think the stomach and gall bladder shut down early on. Maybe the pancreas. Then some other internal organ. Then weird things start happening with the brain. Parts of the brain start to shut down that don't keep us living, but keep us human. One of those parts of the brain that stops working, goes to sleep if you will, is the part that says, "WHAT THE HECK, THAT IS HUMAN FLESH! IT IS WRONG! DON'T EAT IT! DON'T YOU KNOW IT IS TABOO?!?!?!" This part of the brain shuts down and the part of the brain that says, "you're getting sleepy. breathe. breathe. heart pump. heart pump. breathe." also begins to say things like: "food. that's food. do you see the food. yes, it was once another person, just like you, but it is food now. there is nothing wrong with food. if you were the food, and that person was looking at you thinking, breathe, breathe, heart pump, that person would see food too. just a nibble." The article discussed that most castaways in this situation are not found, for long, to have committed any crime. Anyways, it is all in this article:
Cloete, Elsie. "Tigers, humans and animots.(criticism of the book 'Life of Pi')(Critical essay)." Journal of Literary Studies 23.3 (Sept 2007): 314(22). General OneFile. Gale. Albemarle High School. 25 Apr. 2008
If you decide you want to read it. I don't think I will read it again, so if you read it, let me know if my brain read it right.
And I'm thinking about this now. No. Not because I've decided it is ok to eat my child, but because I'm trying to understand what part of my brain, what part of a parent's brain, keeps him and her, him or her, functioning. I'm wondering, since I can't tell if my brain is fighting against my body or vice-versa, what it is that is keeping me not only on my feet, not only continually rocking, not only out of the sleep infested rocking chair, but also able to safely continue to hold this little bundle of love. I'm wondering how it is that after I put him into his bed, sound asleep, I'll go and make sure that Tahlia has a blanket over her, before I climb back into bed. And, how I'll do it again in a couple of hours. It will definitely be raining then.
1 comment:
for those who want to read it, http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Tigers,+humans+and+animots.-a0172168077 good article. Muggsie, you got the gist of it :) which i find both miraculous and really cool considering your current state. "Because a tiger neither knows nor cares about its authoring it remains the writer’s responsibility to animot an alterity that cannot be bridged. At the same time, Martel has bridged the perceived undersides, gaps and fissures that ontology insists exists between ‘humanity’ and ‘animality’ – by showing Pi as metaphor for both"
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