Hey Man, Like, Insomnia!

Who would have thought that China Jasmine Green Tea and a lemon bar would get me so jacked up that I got only about three hours of sleep? Not me, that’s for sure. I wandered over to one of our neighborhood coffee houses night before last just to check it out since we’ve been meaning to go in there for, well, months now. It’s a great place; one of those independent coffee houses that actually succeeds at being comfortable and pleasant, rather than stark and corporate like a Starbucks.

I brought along some work, intending to set myself up for a couple of hours. I had a couple of books and a legal pad to make notes on some future long-term projects I’ve been kicking around in my head. What I hadn’t expected was an open-mic night, which started about an hour after I got there. It was mostly a lot of bad poetry (and a little good) presented with a very Beat-style affectation: lots of pauses and drawn-out syllables and sudden, loud outbursts. What else would you expect from a coffee house open-mic night, right?

Because I spent the hour before the official start scribbling on a notepad, one of the hosts asked me if I was going to perform something. I glanced at my notes for a still-embryonic book idea and said, “No, I don’t think anyone would find this very interesting.” Or would they? Like, hey man, what was the culture of fugitive and refugee slaves like during the Civil War, man? What did they expect from freedom, man? And, like, how did they articulate their liminality? Yeah, man, way out! No, certainly not.

I did enjoy the performances, though, for all of their affectations. There was a very good acoustic guitarist who played a few Latin-American pieces, including a beautiful reinterpretation of some Brazilian folk music. He was the only one who didn’t make a big deal of putting on a persona when he took the stage, and I think that’s one of the reasons he stuck with me.

And he wasn’t the only thing that stuck with me. That green tea must have been some serious stuff, or perhaps that wasn’t really powdered sugar on top of my lemon bar. Whatever the cause, I was wide awake until at least four in the morning. This on top of two previous nights of precarious sleep and evacuations to the couch so that I might give free reign to my jimmy-legs without waking the missus. Restless Leg Syndrome is just a nice way of saying Really Effing Annoying Jumpy Leg Thing. I’m not sure why, but this occasional insomnia has been with me now for a few years. Every couple of months I go through a phase of a week or two in which I sleep very poorly, unable to fall asleep for hours, and then only fitfully. All the time, my legs twitching as if eager to jump off my torso and gallop away into the night. Some nights, I’d be glad to see them go.

While I’m lying awake, I’m rarely able to think about anything productive. My mind jumps around as much as my legs, taking me from bits of half-remembered conversations held days, weeks, or months ago, to work questions I’ve been mulling over, to random chores that need doing or bills that are due soon. Eventually, I’ll fall asleep and have strange, vivid, exhausting dreams, the memories of which are all I have in the morning to know that, yes, I actually did get some sleep. Certainly there’s a poem in there somewhere that could be rendered into an affectation-filled spoken-word performance. If only I could stay awake now to write it.

PS-I’m happy to report a full night’s glorious sleep last night.  Maybe I’ll write that poem now…