Casual
Epstein, Joseph
Casual PERCHANCE TO DREAM At lunch the other day, someone asked me what I thought about The Charlie Rose Show. I answered that I didn't think anything about it, because by the time it comes on in...
...No, once awakened, I try my best to lull myself back to sleep...
...The New York Times's health writer, Calamity (as she's known) Jane Brody has recently written two such articles...
...On occasion, at 2:37 or 3:18 a.m...
...I imagine myself playing tennis at Indian Boundary Park with my friend Bob Swenson, and all my serves go in...
...As I turn off my bed lamp, I never know how long I shall be able to sleep without interruption...
...Lots of articles on sleep deprivation, insomnia, and other bedtime maladies are popping up in the press, which suggests that sleep problems may be fairly widespread...
...I answered that I didn't think anything about it, because by the time it comes on in Chicago I'm usually waking up for the first time...
...and up not later than 5:30 a.m...
...My dreams, meanwhile, get wilder and wilder...
...I must be making lots of them, for I seem to sleep well perhaps one night out of seven...
...Getting much," the rude phrase from my youth, has come to take on a whole new meaning— "much" nowadays referring to sleep, sound, solid, restful sleep...
...I recall once asking a friend when we were fellow houseguests...
...Television stories about the troublesome side effects of sleeping pills— Ambien and others—are getting lots of play, though no one has yet written the advertising line about sleeping pills to match the gem turned out by the genius copywriter for Cialis, the sex stimulant pill...
...I attempt to disengage my mind, let it wander where it will, and call it back only when it threatens to go into the troublesome territory of night fears or anxiety...
...thank you, digital clock), I can calmly sort out quotidian complications, seek solutions for problems in things I'm writing, or instead just lie there counting not sheep but my blessings...
...Give me, I don't say, a break, but just a little more sleep would be nice...
...and splendid means getting up only once or twice without any goofy dreams disturbing my sleep...
...A chief worry one encounters on sleepless nights is that one's lack of sleep will ruin the next day...
...Even better than the cello for sleep is listening to a radio broadcast, at low volume, of Chicago Cubs games played on the West Coast...
...JOSEPH EPSTEIN...
...Last night I was playing a deep leftfield in a night softball game on an unlit field...
...I appear to be entering the stage in life where sleep is topic number one for me and my contemporaries...
...Part of this is physiological, having to do with aging bladders, a subject upon which I prefer not to dwell...
...I picture a charming Yorkshire terrier named Max romping along the beach...
...I'm selective here: Nothing dark or tricky is permitted bedside...
...Certainly it is more unpredictable...
...Einstein said that the people who get things done in the world all get up around five in the morning...
...Splendidly," he said...
...No one, in bed in a dark room, could hope to make it beyond half an inning listening to the assemblage of platitudes and commonplaces of the Cubs' two serenely dull radio announcers...
...I try to be in bed by 10:30 p.m...
...My night life, it occurs to me, may now be more interesting than the life I live during the day...
...But part of it is mental...
...Fortunately, I was clever enough to put in my nuptial agreement that I be permitted to listen to West Coast games in bed for the rest of my life...
...A good way to combat this, though I'm not always able to achieve it, is to attempt actually to enjoy one's insomniacal nights...
...I can't read in bed for more than half an hour...
...Suddenly one can't sleep because one is nervous about not sleeping...
...That makes me, on good nights, a seven-hour-a-night man...
...A few years ago I acquired an excellent CD called Lullaby, Sweet Dreams for Children of All Ages, in which the cellist Julian Lloyd Webber, accompanied by various pianists, plays Brahms and other lullabies with such sweet soporific titles as "Gentle Dreams," "Shepherd's Lullaby," and "Slumber Song...
...Nor, when I wake in the middle of the night, do I ever return to my book...
...Perhaps it might be: If sleep persists for more than eight hours, be sure to see a physician...
...I read before falling asleep...
...I've found that cello music, played adagio, provides an excellent inducement to sleep...
...my current fare is Tolstoy's Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth...
...Often I revert to scenes of my boyhood to do the job...
...I don't usually have a tough time getting to sleep...
...I didn't make a single error...
...Yet fewer and fewer are the nights when I get those seven hours uninterrupted...
...How did you sleep...
...The night before the dead wife of a much older and now also dead friend turned up and flirted with me...
...Last week I lost my then-aged father at Heathrow...
...The dopey cliché about "curling up in bed with a good book" has never applied to me...
Vol. 11 • May 2006 • No. 34
