Sunday August 25 2024
Happy Sunday dear ones,
Last night, when most of the people in my world & time zone were sleeping, including my nocturnal husband, I was awake writing a poem to a Clothes’ moth.
My friend Courtney & I kept wild hours in graduate school at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Sometimes, in the midst of writing or reading or synthesizing both before class the next day, we’d send each other messages. Little glowing flags in the darkness of 3 am. We were always very gentle with each other if we had to push back a coffee or dinner date by 30 minutes or more. We called our temporal approach “Poet Time.”
Who needs sleep when there are dreams to dream?
The truth is: me. I do. We all do. My sleep schedule is something I’m actively working on. But I also treasure the ill-timed flash of inspiration. The muse that shows up on your porch at 1 am holding the last two cigarettes in the weekend’s pack, looking for a lighter, has a different flavor than the muse at 1 pm dappled in sunlight through the forest’s canopy. I need them both. Who am I to turn one away?
I think of my dear professor at UVA, Pulitzer Prize winning Poet Laureate Rita Dove, who kept pretty impressive hours, as in up all night working & thinking while her neighbors slept. It validated me so much as a young writer to see someone in the top of our field who was also nocturnal. She believed the hours she kept were nourishing for her & she apologized to no one for them. This is one of many ways she continues to inspire me.
Have you heard of Revenge Bedtime Procrastination? It occurs when individuals sacrifice sleep for personal time. Often, it affects people who feel a lack of control over their life, so they stay up late, as though reclaiming their time from the spotlight of the sun: the waking & working world with its rules, regulations, & expectations. There’s no one to see or judge you in the middle of the night. Those hours that belong only to you may be an opportunity to express creative energy that’s not used up during the day or simply enjoy the luxury of leisure time. Though not the same, RBP makes me think of the restlessness of grief. The warped sleep of recovery from illness or surgery.
When I moved from Chicago to live with my parents in Southern Illinois while I recovered from the life-changing ankle surgery that led to the development of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS), infection, a picc line, a blood clot in that picc line which was the second blood clot of that summer, debilitating chronic migraine, & a plethora of conditions I had previously never heard of, I felt very out of control of my life.
Walking was painful. Sunlight was painful. Seeing others be the normal I once embodied was painful. In some ways, I didn’t want to be seen. My life was incredibly different than it had been a few months before & while I will always be grateful for the love & care of my family, I had lost a lot of independence at age 29.
So I’d sit up alone at night, watching dark television filled with swear words & adult themes in my Dad’s big recliner with my sore foot nestled under a heated blanket & cats. Sometimes I’d turn on the gas fireplace. Duster, my parents’ beautiful long-haired black cat with amber eyes, came close to me then. He was starving & scared when they took him in. I think some parts of his story that we don’t know have stayed with him–he is afraid of most people. He feels safest at night, when the social hub of my parents’ house, a sun central to our family’s universe, is quiet & mostly empty. Then ruled by the moon.
Lately, my husband has been hearing an animal call from our neighbor’s wooded yard. A night call. A night animal. They don’t need us to hear them, but what a treasure to behold the shadow song. Not an Eastern Screech Owl, we’ve determined. The caller’s identity remains a mystery yet. All this to say: if it’s the calls of the morning that awaken you. Answer them. If it’s the deep & dark of night, imagine me waving a small glow-in-the-dark flag across the water at 1 am.
Until next week—sweet dreams,
Annie
The image use in this week’s Annie-gram is the painting “Night Forest” by Ivy Stevens-Gupta
Annie-gram 5: Night Moves