A Lot of Consonants

Can you sleep?

If so, I’d tell you to [expletive] off but hey, you’re probably asleep, so never mind. This is for the rest of us.

• Drink a glass of almond milk. You could try soy or dairy or rice, but almond really tastes better.
• Stare out the window, for however long.
• Stare at the cat sleeping next to you. Is he rubbing it in or is he trying to lead by example? Augh! He is doing that thing where he curls upside down and puts his paws over his face. 
• Google types of cats and decide that yours are, most likely, Brooklyn bastards of Korat extraction. “I am sometimes unnerved when the Korats seem to know something before I do.”
• There are so many old Nardwaur interviews on the internet.
• Consider doing something productive, like answering email or working on that story or finishing that essay that’s been sitting in draft form on your desktop for six weeks. Realize the essay is no longer timely, at all. Stare out the window some more.
• Consider going for a walk. Realize that would involve putting on pants and shoes and a coat and who even has the energy for that. Stare out the window some more.
• Wonder if the prostitutes up the street near the playground are doing okay. Spend some time Googling to figure out why the New York Times locates that playground in Boerum Hill; shouldn’t Gowanus go up to Butler and the head of the canal?
• Turn off the computer. Read four pages of the nearest book. Feel sleepy. Get excited. Find a bookmark. False alarm.
• Do this deep-breathing exercise: inhale through nose for a count of five, hold for a count of five, exhale through mouth for a count of five, repeat five times.
• Feel calm, and slightly energized. Tidy a shelf.
• Remember you took a sleeping pill, like, six hours ago. Feel cheated. Consider writing a letter to the manufacturer.
• The thing about insomnia is it changes your entire perspective on sleep: it’s not something you go to, because you can’t get there; it’s something you try and fail to do, and that’s the worst of it, the failure, because ordinary idiots manage to pull this off every night. Like, Rick Santorum can sleep, I’m sure of it. So can Sarah Palin. So can Carrot Top. Also, because insomnia makes you tired, you wind up thinking about it during the day, and talking about it, because a) it haunts you like a phantom limb and b) you feel compelled to explain to people why you are talking slowly and have bags under your eyes. Carrot Top never has to do this. Feel sad.
• Turn the computer back on. Write a list. Writing a list is always soothing, even if you are doing it in your not-sleep.