The Big Sleep

Insomnia is no fun.

I’ve had it pretty bad now for about a year. It’s lame and consistent and my sleeping pill stash has been dwindling. It's especially lame because I can’t figure out what causes it, and the price of sleeping pills just keeps climbing.

Inflation in this country is an epic battle.

Of course logic stipulates that it’s stress or anxiety or the bottle of bourbon in my panty drawer that must be keeping me up at odd hours, but things that stress me out keep changing, and my life keeps changing, and even, yes, my boyfriends keep changing, or they did when I had them, but insomnia . . . so consistent.

Recently it’s the stuff that comes before sleep that keeps me from getting there, the pseudo dream stuff your mind starts to explore just before you drift off into black beta waves. My before-sleep stuff is starting to become something of nightmares, only there’s really nothing bad going on in them. Just people I know, people I’ve tried to forget, we all hang out at a bar and laugh about old times. Only no one is drinking, and I’m smoking, and I don’t smoke. Also, the old times are usually old for a reason. They’re things I’d rather forget.

I’m taking a break from writing, something I would not have a problem with a year ago, or a couple years ago. I’m taking a break on purpose now, a week or two, I tell myself, the MS is getting stale and I need new perspective. Meanwhile, I have no new ideas for the massive holes in the plot but I’m writhing in agony over not typing, and my pre-dream stuff is getting pretty far out there.

In one of these, I’m in Spain again, and I’m watching a movie I know and I’m eating popcorn, the good kind that’s so buttered it’s orange, served up old school in those striped red and white boxes. The theater is pitch black and I’m confused because the usher, responding to my broken Spanish, examined my ticket and led me into a dark theater. He dropped me off in the back of a near deserted playhouse with a film already underway. There are only a couple people littering the seats in odd intervals, the kind of haphazard pattern that signals a matinee or a restless day, just some broken hearts and listless old women whiling away the time.

On the screen, there is a beautiful foreign creature screaming in Spanish, but it’s all hopelessly screwed up. She is blonde and blue eyed, but she is no California dream. She looks European with that lazy, undone prettiness, and she is screaming at an older woman in what looks like a Cuban cabana. I find out it is an island off Nicaragua, the older woman is her mother, and they are screaming over her black lover. She switches effortlessly from Spanish back to French when it suits her, but the subtitles are in English, except when they are not.

There is a lot I am missing but I do not mind, I am comfortable with my popcorn and the woman next to me has large glasses and is giggling, never mind that the black lover all the fuss seems to be about just washed up ashore near the cabana as an unhappy corpse.

I bought tickets to see The Lake House. It’s printed on my stub, and while I’m no expert at foreign nuances I am pretty sure Sandra Bullock is not going to pop out of the closet.

The movie ends over an hour later and I am not sure what I paid for. The woman next to me turns and starts talking to me, gesturing, but I don’t hear any of her words. It’s like someone hit the mute button on a magic remote control and I am just watching another movie. I sit and eat my popcorn and watch her mouth things at me until she starts to cry behind her big glasses. Big watery fishbowls, filling. I have no idea what is going on.

There are several problems with the whole thing. Namely, I remember this day in Spain very well, because I remember all the days well. It was a hundred and six degrees everyday, and there was nothing else to do all month long but burn and try to stay awake. But several things are off, and I never did get the title of that bizarre film, though I waited through an agonizing hour of obscure film to get it. Also, this is just pre-dream stuff, but I remember the theater and going there, but I know I didn’t have any popcorn. I had spent my last euro on an overpriced taxicab ride.

So I wake up, because it’s better than lying in bed in non-sleep wondering if I have a deep-seated craving for popcorn or I am really just screwed up. There is no breeze outside the window and it’s a sad thing to be in the I.E. when the days are burning again, and there’s no hope for a breeze now and again.