Monday, September 9, 2013

sleeping canvas.

Everyone is tucked in under the night air. The crickets begin their chorus to the orange gleam of the streetlights. My midwife told me that most women go into labor in the middle of the night. When the rest of the world is asleep, these miracles begin to surface.

Sleep is something I have been thinking a lot about lately; how much of an opportunity I have for it these days but how little I use that opportunity. Ironically, I am up, unable to sleep, because I am thinking of how little sleep I should be getting.  I expected a year of no sleep and while I was slightly anxious about this, I am now overwhelmed and anxiety ridden with the amount of time I now have to sleep.  I imagine waking up every two hours to nurse, filling the empty space between my arms. I imagine my friends, (most of which just had babies) sleepwalking between beds, exhausted with the filled space of their hearts. For them, sleep is emptiness.

Sometimes, emptiness and sleep go hand in hand. Once you are able to empty your mind, you can find yourself more able to sleep. But emptiness can also be terrifying. An empty canvas has an unknown past and future. An empty canvas has a presence just waiting to find relevance. It is quiet emptiness that strangles; stillness that creeps up every nerve in your body awaiting for something to break. What is the present? The present should be sleep. The present should not be sleep. The present is an empty canvas.

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