400 Words about Sleep

I don't know much about metaphysics; sleep however is a topic I know a bit about, at least in the same way one who spends their days on a farm knows about animals though they've never taken a zoology class.

I’ve been blessed with the ability to sleep well. I can fall asleep on a whim. As I grow older the locations and positions I can sleep in have decreased, but give me a bed and two minutes and I’m out. Struggling with sleep sounds horrible to me and is a thing I hope to never deal with. Unfortunately it’s probably a false hope, like hoping you never have to deal with losing friends, having your loved ones die, or dying yourself. One of the few times I lose sleep is when I’m worrying about that tragic day when it takes me an hour to fall asleep.

Clearly a key question is: how does one fall asleep? I’m not sure exactly. But I can say how one does not fall asleep and from that perhaps we can suppose how one falls asleep, even if we can’t nail down the physiology behind it. Outside of some “problems” with the brain there are two ways not to fall asleep: if your body is too uncomfortable or if your mind is racing, thinking about something. In regard to comfort I can testify to the importance of a good mattress, this is a thing that can’t be overrated in life. But at my age the bigger problem for most of the people I know is the mind--learning to turn it off. What should we think of a mind that can be turned off so quickly? Does its owner posses such great power over their body? Or does its owner actually NOT have a single important thing to think about? Does the owner have a conscious so clear there is no burden or guilt keeping them awake? Or do they have such a deep and profound apathy that the ills of the world, and their own, can’t penetrate whatever defenses they’ve placed around their minds?

Once, on Maui, I was probably 19, I slept on a hard floor in a sleeping bag; I put a CD in, skipped ahead to song number ten, hit the repeat button, and fell asleep to the sounds of a tropical rain storm and this. And life was brilliant.

Tired

What a tired little blog we have here. Not a post since July?!?!?!!? How has the Internet survived without me? Maybe we'll remedy this shortly.

Touch

Feel this ... for a little while.

Left Field

This is a couple days old, but I was happily surprised by Iowa's Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriages. We live in such a bubble out here in California that I forget the fight is everywhere. Anyway the decision/opinion of the Justices is here and is worth the read but the best part is the treatment on child rearing. I'm pretty sure it's the best response to "what about the children?" that I've heard so far.

Promotion of Optimal Environment to Raise Children. The second of the County’s proffered governmental objectives involves promoting child rearing by a father and a mother in a marital relationship, the optimal milieu according to some social scientists. Although the court found support for the proposition that the interests of children are served equally by same-sex parents and oppositesex parents, it acknowledged the existence of reasoned opinions that dualgender parenting is the optimal environment for children. Nonetheless, the court concluded the classification employed to further that goal—sexual orientation—did not pass intermediate scrutiny because it is significantly under-inclusive and over-inclusive.

The statute, the court found, is under-inclusive because it does not exclude from marriage other groups of parents—such as child abusers, sexual predators, parents neglecting to provide child support, and violent felons—that are undeniably less than optimal parents. If the marriage statute was truly focused on optimal parenting, many classifications of people would be excluded, not merely gay and lesbian people. The statute is also under-inclusive because it does not prohibit same-sex couples from raising children in Iowa. The statute is over-inclusive because not all same-sex couples choose to raise children. The court further noted that the County failed to show how the best interests of children of gay and lesbian parents, who are denied an environment supported by the benefits of marriage under the statute, are served by the ban, or how the ban benefits the interests of children of heterosexual parents. Thus, the court concluded a classification that limits civil marriage to opposite-sex couples is simply not substantially related to the objective of promoting the optimal environment to raise children.

I should learn from this

A quote from a book I just finished:

If he had learned anything it was that family was not so much what you were given as what you were able to maintain.

I'm sort of a bad family member. I'm sorry family for driving you crazy, who knows if I'll ever do better much.

Chairs for the Library

One is incredibly too big, but so comfy. The other is small and Robyn found it for $50--we couldn't pass it up. Now we just have to find another that matches it.

Rivers continued

He did finally get on that plane. And he did finally see the massive expanses and great depths of the Amazon.

He stepped into the water; it was warm against his skin. He relaxed and then it happened. A school of piranhas swam by. They circled back as he eased out further into the warm waters. He sank deep, letting the water wash over his head; he wanted to know if he could touch the bottom. Sink sink sink. Then the fish flowed around him, ignoring him, almost as if they didn't believe their good luck. But not all the fish were tricked by such good fortune.

The last fish opened its mouth and bit at his calf. He felt a small sting. Then the other fish received the firsts silent message--sent through thousands of blood cells: nourishment was here. The blood of our blood. The life of our life. The love of our love. And there in the dark green waters of the Amazon he was consumed.

After the fish had picked his bones clean and moved onto smaller meals, the unrelenting flow of the river caught hold of his bones and washed them out toward the ocean. They mixed with the silt, passed alligators, fresh water dolphins, and children wise enough to stay clear of schools of piranhas. They were swept off the continent and into the ocean, spewed from the mouth of the land. There in the ocean he was swallowed by a giant whale, mouth opened wide, eating blindly. The whale closed its eyes and sank to the ocean floor where it slept. And slept. And slept.

Many years later it awoke, hungry for air. It rushed to the surface. A spout of water shot from its back, reaching for the moon and stars. And out came the bones. When they hit ground he was back, back on the quiet shores of the Mississippi. There he rested until the river overcame its banks.

Then They were together again.