While growing up my parents decided to divorce. It was and remains a fairly common occurrence in the U.S. - about half of the marriages endure. My mother suffered from insomnia as a result, making her working life strenuous and my growing up - interesting. I do not like the feeling of not having had enough rest, whether this can be attributed to my early experiences or a simple biological quest for stasis - who knows. Last night was unusual and all the warnings for a restless night lined up - a forthcoming journey, new neighbors - the owners were called away late at night. My room has a an odd acoustic amenity such that i can hear someone breathing in the main entryway. Normally this is not a factor in sleeping, for the house becomes quiet early on, but sometimes that just won’t happen - last night was one of those nights. I once lived in a room in Uruguay that had very tall ceilings and a paper thin wall that mostly served as a crude speaker of sorts amplifying everything from the room next door - my neighbor was an Argentinian cocaine addict given to late night television - which grew in volume as the night wore on. This experience cured me of any fallacious thinking about control; considering the level of bomb borne mayhem in parts of our world, mine is a minor complaint. I would expect that the children of those regions are far advanced in their capacity to seize rest when possible to my own crude routines designed to refresh me for the next day’s labors. Last night - nothing would work. This happens, and apparently has been happening for centuries if your read anything on fatigue. Arguments come out on both sides with Leonard Cohen in his typically majestic openness declaring “the last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world,” while the more scientific writings exhort the dangers - mostly with regard to damage to the economy - accidents, disorientation, loss of clarity, etc., etc., etc.,
So waking up from a sleepless night and completing some of the preparations for a long journey, lacking strength to draw, i took a nap. I prefer the feeling of rest to the oppression of fatigue. How much of that is reaction formation to the torments of living with a sleep deprived adult during my formative years is anyone’s guess. So why is it as part of the medical training ritual that those responsible for our healthy wellbeing are subjected to sleep depravation as a training modality¿ Medical Interns are systematically taxed to a destructive level as though the capacity to function without sleep is going to inform their medical decisions¿ I couldn’t even power through a simple essay on exhaustion without taking a nap, much less operate on my 3rd patient of my third straight shift. Why are we as a species not taking advantage of our own best information and lessening the burden of those tasked with our wellbeing - well compensated though they be. How is it that the vaunted excellence of Western medicine has been bifurcated, even stranded into classifications of wellness. The rich live longer - that fact is well documented as well as the lethality for women of color bearing babies. There is something immensely askew when enough data accumulates that clearly prescribes 1) greater rest for the neophyte practitioners of medicine 2) adjustment to protocols for the at-risk portions of the population lacking medical attention 3) restriction of profit from the health or illness of humanity. What if, as some philosophers suggest we are all a single tree and the conceit that some branches are more worthy of wellbeing is destructive to the tree in its entirety. Be mindful that these thoughts are coming from an admittedly sleep deprived individual and as such are suspect. . . 2 days later in flight, after cycles of fatigue, rest, and now more fatigue. Taking off at 6:45 am required rousing by 4 to be out the door in time - i woke at 2:45. I am not sharing from complaint - these are exigencies for most people on our planet. Harried is what describes hunted foxes, but now describes schedules of the better part of our world. Recently Amazon announced it was applying for a patent on a device which can synchronize with workflow schedules and prompt a worker to speed up or detect when the employee has paused for an “unacceptable” amount of time. How long before we are lining up at the charnel gates because the +/- 5v device implanted in our craniums has determined your time on the planet is up?
I will be away from home and routine for an unknown time. It is not a happy prospect, but i’ve been able to observe the approaching change from a distance - a little like watching a train wreck in slow motion, and if that observation is accurate - watching a train wreck in slow motion is very taxing indeed. It is hard to differentiate the fatiguing from the simply annoying. Part of the journey means visits with family, that sadly are not happily anticipated (my responsibility) - additionally i will be opening a storage crypt shut from the light of day for four years. It is hard to say which is more tiresome the 2 hour drive to and from, or the dead weight knowledge of having to shift statues about that were intended as a bulwark against poverty in my later years and have now become little more than a funny resemblance to Byron’s albatross. What becomes increasingly clear as i fly through the air ever closer, is how much control can be gained through simple discipline of one’s thoughts. Part of the advantage of rising ahead of time was the meditation/exercise cycle i would gain by accelerating my schedule. Rather than sweating the entire trip about events i have no control over e.g. will the shuttle wait, can i recover enough rest in a single night etc., it is nearly possible to examine the near future as it pertains to tiredness. I am hoping the airplane i am flying in is not tired, nor the customs agent giving to assessing my threat to the states at large, or the shuttle driver. It would seem the only time that exhaustion is a welcome condition is when it intersects with a period of time where rest is accessible. That seems to be a back-assward way to go about living. Our planet, if you can accept the concept of it as a living system, is at the point of collapse, and still we are demanding more from mother Gaia than at any other time in history; what could go wrong¿ I worry about driving for two hours when i’m not well rested, and we are asking an intricitly complex ecosystem that, to this day, we barely understand enough to support not just 7 billion of the most destructive animals ever developed on its surface - as it is having 10s of thousands of tons of irradiated water poured into her oceans and billions upon billions of pieces of plastic waste gorging its waterways.
What could go wrong, besides everything¿ It seems me and the planet are not the only tired things in our world. Solution, leaders, entertainment . . . damn near everything i can imagine is tired in one way or another. How much of that statement is projection from an old man, and how much an accurate estimation by a seasoned veteran of the culture wars, i don’t know. I know i’m still fresh enough to be asking questions. What would it take from us as a species to give mama earth a rest. This morning i threw away more plastic than i have in the past week, and i could have avoided it. Poor judgement is one of the warning signs of fatigue. What if mama Gaia starts making poor judgements from her fatigue¿ I’ve read the magnetic poles have begun to oscillate, what other planetary systems are given to stress-induced oscillation. Is there a point of intersection with the firestorm activity, and the chem trails that nobody knows anything about - the same “nobody” who appointed mr. m.t. suit, and decided in a world of unemployed mothers and fathers that robotic technology is going to save us all. I don’t trust the motivation of those propagating robot technology. I am of an age where the leaders had been trumpeting the coming of the technology, how work weeks would shrink and abundance was a natural outgrowth - it turns out the only thing produced with any abundance is war and tyranny. These two activities are quite strenuous on not just the population but the ecosphere itself. Before i left an essay was circulating amongst friends suggesting that south of the equator the backwardness and inability to capitalize on natural resources could be attributed to superstition while the advanced extraction methods of the northern regions was due to a rational philosophical foundation. As a child of the north, it is galling to hear the same tired conceits trotted out in advance of the full court press to undermine commonwealth and privatize natural resources.
Tired arguments in a tired world pitched to war weary residents - what could go wrong, or more importantly, what could go right, and how? One important step is to scale back what are considered worthy objectives. This has happened to me as i’ve aged, when i once thought nothing of landing in a foreign nation without a destination, anymore i’m reluctant to leave my lodgings if i don’t know where and when i’m going to arrive. .. a full week into a complicated journey. Yesterday, i may very well have said my last goodbye in person to my ma. And while anticipation of such a serious task could be more than fatiguing, the conversation permitted nothing but the most focused and caring approach possible. Our relationship is tired, but the love is fresh. She is aged and from having lived in her company during one of the most trying times of her life - she appears to me as exhausted. What is different this time around, is i am not owning that. Not because i am unwilling to shoulder whatever i can to ease her passing, but because the burdens she would have me carry are fictitious. I couldn’t have known this when young, it was only from sorting through baggage of my own design that i have learned, or am learning to distinguish between real and unreal. What i have learned is that i cannot be responsible for what another person feels anymore than i can expect to sway another by my expectation, command or desire. Ultimately each human organism rights his/her self back to whatever trajectory their inner compass had guided them to before they acceded to influence. If someone is hell bent for greed, no amount of logic will veer them from that path, and if one’s heart is guided by love there is not amount of hatred or cruelty that will bend that heart to its will. I believe that the fatigue that is not the result of hard happy work comes from the burden of dread one drags in the wake of a misguided ambition. Those tasks that nurture one’s core hopes come easily and the struggles necessary to persevere are endurable and even fortifying as well as edifying. I am now taking a train to a little known destination to meet a once known love, however puppyfied that love might have been. I do not dread this journey to gaze into the face of an old love, nor know exactly why. I can only hope that i brought some similar ease and comfort to the exchange of complex emotions for what may have been the last time sharing air with my too-tired-to-enjoy-life-but-still-on-her-feet-swinging mother.
Addendum: a wracking cough i carried with me to my rendezvous has miraculously subsided; whether it was from the kind ministrations of a loving heart, or the physical joy of being in the company of a loving being, i can’t say but i welcome
any healing that leaves my pain more tired than my joy.
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rested - the sonnet
things at rest will tend to remain at rest;
things in motion tend to stay in motion-
unless acted upon by some interest
for example - the moon and the ocean.
heavy rocks tend to sit where they are set
airheads get blown back, forth, and back again
yet relativity remains the net
making what sits where a function of when
the kindest motion is the most gentle
and that which is stationary hardest
the heart waiting for sound of her ship’s keel
or news informing of the bitterest
entropy expends our world yet our black
holes emit knowledge that our hearts still lack
jts 04/27/2018
http://stoneartist.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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