The Sheep Counting Myth

My insomnia as of late has peaked to the very early hours of the morning, and it is beginning to worry me as I am nearing the return to university after my long winter break. 

This is worrying me to the extent that I have tried new ways to fall asleep, such as the stereotypical one that most parents have actually used on their children: counting sheep. I lay there at 3am, my room pitch black, my phone and books well out of reach, covered up to my chin in my warm blankets, my eyes closed tightly. I then imagined a wooden fence high enough to still allow for sheep to be able to comfortably jump out of their entrapment, and low enough for them to be able to land without harming their little kneecaps and ankles. And away they went, grey fluffy sheep after grey fluffy sheep. And they kept going. 

In fact, they went on for hours. And I counted them one by one. I did not feel at all tired. In fact, instead, I got to thinking who thought of this fallible technique in the first place. I wanted to drop a load of sheep on their head.

The main reference that I found to 'counting sheep as a means of attaining sleep' was, according to Wikipedia, found in Harriet Martineau's Illustrations of Political Economy, dating back to 1832. The quote is as follows:

"It was a sight of monotony to behold one sheep after another follow the
adventurous one, each in turn placing its fore-feet on the breach in the fence,
bringing up its hind legs after it, looking around for an instant from the summit,
and then making the plunge into the dry ditch, tufted with locks of wool...
the recollection of the scene of transit served to send the landowner to sleep
more than once, when occurring at the end of the train of anxious thoughts which
had kept him awake." (p. 355–356)

Are sheep really that boring? Do they exist to lull us to sleep with the imagining of their fluffy woollen bodies? What if one'a imagination permits the sheep that they are imagining to call out, sending one back to being wide awake from the sudden noise of the sheep? 

Sheep aside, I cannot actually recall anything that constitutes as my last thought as I fall asleep. All I am aware of is that each time that I try to envision something, I am distracted from falling asleep. Sometimes I even try envisioning darkness, but when my mind is alerted of my attempt I wake up again. I am quite certain that I do think of something right before I sleep, but I can never remember what it is. 

I suppose Martineau is not to blame for this myth. She may have just suggested it and never intended to advise it. Cartoons are to blame for this. I remember distinctly an episode from the Looney Toons wherein sheep counting was displayed. There are a lot of cartoons that showed me this, actually, and I suppose I was falsely led to believe them. 

When I sleep tonight, I will try not to imagine Martineau sanding beside sheep jumping over a fence, sticking her two middle fingers up at me and laughing menacingly. Because I know for certain that that would not lull me to sleep. 

An Hour Before Midnight

The story of Cinderella has led us to falsely believe that the party really begins after the clock strikes twelve, that the hour of rebellion is nigh because one is expected to be doing more lady-like things like acquiring more beauty from within the realm of sleep, or preparing tomorrow's outfit. I believe, however, the party begins much earlier.

Not that early, around an hour earlier actually. I believe the party begins at eleven pm, sixty minutes before Cinderella's curfew is over, and arguably she must have thought so too considering her curfew is an hour away - my reasoning differs from hers, though, and that is what makes the entirety of this post unique. My reason is that at eleven pm on any given weekday, I acquire the same serenity that Monks all over the world try with all their mights to achieve, and I do this without the act of shaving my head or cloaking myself in an orange robe, rather I do it by prolonging the hours I stay awake - by aligning with my insomnia, and pushing open my eyelids for a little while longer.

It is difficult in my family to imagine the sound of silence. Without a single ounce of exaggeration, every time my father speaks it sounds as though there is a brawl happening. It sounds as though at any given moment my father's large fists will penetrate the face of whoever he is allegedly conversing with, and even we, who are entirely used to this factor, mistake his conversations for the initiation of a large brawl, so I cannot imagine the reactions of all the poor onlookers who pass his milk bar, or even enter it. 

And considering it being so difficult to imagine silence, when silence comes along I feel it pulsating through my veins. I feel the heaviness of its presence, weighing down the bottom of the canals leading to my inner-ear drums. I welcome its presence, I quietly roister as it sits with me and I share with it the noiseless peace it brings with it. It is such a contrast, my life before eleven pm and my life after it - from a trumpeting brawl atmosphere to an atmosphere so quiet clouds feel uncomfortable.

And it is the poise of this silence which entrances me the most. I never want to leave its side but I know that that it inevitable when I part with it to enter my bedroom, for my sister snores, and in the absence of her snoring, or along with her snoring, my father and mother's snores filter in and synchronise together and form a, for them, harmonious beat and for me, the beat of insomnia. 

Nanna Naps

There is an extreme lack of control, an inability to maintain any sense of control or any chance of regaining control once a young adult is lounged on a comfortable leather sofa after a long, tiring day, for once one does so, they fall into a peace that no monster can destroy.

'Nanna Nap', the fault in every young person where if they work a little too hard in their day, they will fall asleep at a spontaneous morning before the dark evening sets in, a powerful sleep wherein they nod off, wake up, and nod off again, continuing the cycle until they fall into the mental realm of all elderly, the point of no return, the inverted peak of inactivity. No young person is safe from this, it is a fault in their wiring because they are wired to initially explore and experience, not conform and comply - when they do end up conforming and complying, they tire themselves to an extent where they fall into a mental state that is inevitable to all those wrinkly occupants at nursing homes.

Young adults who are affected by these Nanna Naps usually are tertiary students who cannot afford to be anything but productive. These naps eliminate the possibility of productivity, and when waken, these  victimised young adults are faced with the daunting possibility of momentarily forgetting the time, day, month, or year that it is. Be it that these Nanna Naps are short, but they are long enough to destroy the young adult's sense of time, their sense of spatial cognition, and their hopes and dreams. These futile naps can destroy every potential of a future, whilst masking themselves with needs, wants and desires. Soon enough, at one point in their difficult day, the young adult would need some sleep, they would want to nap, and have the desire of rest, and the only thing that can give them all three is the Nanna Nap.

Nanna Naps have illusory benefits, in fact they mostly have no benefits at all. At the time they are initiated, young adults fall into the myth that they need it, that it will help them in getting through the rest of the day, when the truth is that the Nanna Nap cunningly steals away the rest of the young adult's day, and abolishes their ability to fall asleep later that evening, when insomnia crawls in and takes over. The young adult then finds themselves in a situation where they cannot prepare their bodies for the demands of the following day, and struggle throughout it when they finally wake after their alarms ring thirteen or fifteen times. They drag their bodies in a lifeless manner, involuntarily duplicating the movements of the walking dead, and have to rely on energy drinks or caffeine or both to keep their eyelids from caving in for the rest of the day, until, of course, they find the urge to, once home, partake in a Nanna Nap again.

Victims of both the vicious cycle and of capitalism, young adults have no means of escaping their daily fates. They must commence their lives, napping at strange hours and waking up years, or so it seems, later. Though they have no sense of control of Nanna Naps, Nanna Naps, as cunning as they seem, actually exist for the welfare of the young adult's mentality. They briefly calm the young adult so that they do not derail themselves from the track of life, and offer them a period of repose, wherein there is no essay nor exam nor experience awaiting to trouble them, where a fleeting utopia calms them, and provides them with the opportunity to release their thoughts. 

We all require Nanna Naps, as devious as they sometimes are. They are the student's guardian angels, the student's alternative to a getaway, and a student's nightmare. They are both beneficial and detrimental, but there is no escaping them. Nobody can escape a Nanna Nap.

Condensed Hours of Sleep

One may rest his weary head upon his trusty pillow,

Yet one needs to awaken early and tell the world 'hello'.

For if one has an early flight that he needs to catch,

He must win against sleep in the nightly match.

I have four hours of sleep. Tonight is not the only night that I have had condensed sleeping hours, yet tonight is the night where I actually need to wake up early the day after, which means that I need to abide by my condensed sleeping hours, so that I ensure myself not being the reason as to why my family misses its fight back to Melbourne.

This comes as unsatisfying news to me, as I am not only using my condensed hours of sleep to write this, but I also have to use some to continue reading the book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - it is quite an addictive book, if I must say so, and it requires constant attention, which ultimately requires a lot of time, and time is something I am very short of tonight if I want to catch the plane tomorrow. What pains me is that in order to sleep, I need to write and post this, then to think about life and the souls I have met, and then read. It is only then that I can fall into a peaceful slumber.

And another problem arises - once I fall, I fall into a deep sleep. I am a deep sleeper, in fact so deep, that a marching band on full volume cannot shake me from my rest. My body wakes up when it feels discomfort in the position it is in, or when my bowls decide to, well, move. None of these will happen in four hours, because my bowls have no reason to move as of yet, and this bed I am sleeping on at the moment is uncomfortable all over, thus I think it is impossible for me to get to sleep in the first place.

I am scared if I fall asleep that my father will have to wake me. I should not worry about this in terms of its success in waking me up, because my father's voice has the, insofar, unproven ability to wake up the petrified Chinese warriors. My worries lie not in the fear of my dad failing to wake me, because that will never be the case because of how strong his inside voice is, but they lie in the fact that when or if I sleep, I will have to be woken by him. I will have to go through freezing and immediately thawing nerves, risking permanent damage in my reflex system.

Now, I have so many things to worry about that I probably will not get any sleep. I have promised myself a large, juicy can of RedBull energy drink tomorrow and a nap on the plane back, if I do not sleep. However, because tonight I am sharing a room with my mother, who is terrified of the movie Mama that we just saw - her second viewing of it, I probably will not enjoy her snoring, which has already started to tear at my very soul. It is no wonder that my father had so happily traded his bed for sleeping on the sofa. He is now able to comfortably sleep and sore to a James Bond movie, while I am cooped up with Snore-a-saurus Rose.

In the midst of this dilemma, my sister is asleep, sound asleep, in an atmosphere of peace, cool air and serenity in the comfortable double-bed I was sharing with her the last five nights here. I am the shortest in my family, and my feet are hanging off the tiny single bed I am laying on now. I feel as though I am the intrusive Goldilocks sleeping in the three bears' lair. I toss and turn in my sleep, and this bed likes to notify every family member in this resort about that.

Do not take your bed for granted the way I have. The best holiday is one where you can take your bed with you. And earmuffs. Big, fluffy, noise-reducing earmuffs.

Horrid Humidity

Humidity takes a juicy, bright red apple and turns it into a bitter, withered lemon. It takes a pool of cool water and turns it into hot sand.

Most days, I am affixed to my duties: wake up, dress up, drink coffee, immerse in conversations about the complexity of simple-minded people with my mother, have breakfast, read. I sometimes run a few errands for my parents. I do all these with ease and haste. No problems confront me, everything is as smooth as a yacht on an oily, calm seabed on a warm summer's day.

However, when my dear fiend, humidity, comes along, my soul dispels all hope of completing my daily tasks and I am figuratively dragged down to the floor, where I wither and waste away what could have been a perfectly positive and productive day.

My otherwise pale face takes on a shade of amber, and I appear as though I have been sleepless for three centuries. I end up looking like a hungry vampire, imprisoned in cobblestone-covered walls inside a dungeon, shied away from the moonlight or the ability to feast on fresh blood. I become lifeless, almost worthless, and I sweat away whatever fluids I had consumed prior to the attack of horrid humidity.

I become sluggish. Moving, in itself, becomes a task. It becomes one difficult to pursue, to undertake. To have me moving whilst under the attack of humidity should be deemed miraculous - if I had a choice of being burnt alive, no wait, I would not choose that. Humidity is not all that bad, but it is rather horrid. The only reasons behind any movement on a humid day would be to acquire water, and after that acquire more water. Some movement also goes to the acquisition of ice-cream. Though, gelato is rather preferable - orange flavored gelato.

In complaining about humidity though, I think back on those winter nights where I wished summer was back. I think back on driving with the windows up and three jackets on, and wishing for summer to return so that I could wind the windows down, and turn the music up. I was wrong with the thought of feeling the breeze in my hair in the duration of this though, because now, with this humidity, my hair is so limp and frizzy that a biscuit dipped in coffee can stand straighter. Now I wish that winter would return. And when it does, and brings with it the flu, I will wish again for humidity to visit - it's a constant cycle.

With humidity, though, I surprisingly feel comfort. I have not yet grown out of feeling as though if I slept uncovered, a monster would reach for my foot and pull me away from safety. Humidity acts like a blanket. I do not need to be covered by my quilt because I am blanketed by an invisible layer of utter heat, a sweaty, sticky force-field that the Boogeyman would dare not even attempt to penetrate. This not only annoys me, but it also comforts me - and my parents, for that matter, for they view my possible suitors, even though they would not dare enter my room seeing as I am fathered by the epitome of the Hulk, as Boogeymen. Chances are that if what humidity does to my otherwise silky, smooth, clean body, scares off monsters, it will also scare off those men. In most ways, therefore, humidity keeps me celibate.

Humidity eliminates monsters, men, cleanliness, sleep and dignity. It resuscitates insomnia, and creates sudden deadly mood swings. It turns my head of hair into the likeness of a  Sasquatch's pubic hair. However, I prefer it more than I prefer the misery that is winter, because until I find another lonesome soul, winter will be unenjoyable, in the same way that having a spouse in humid times makes one uneasy.