Insomnia

// My Inner Monologue Loves Fishsticks

By Alex Aloise .
04.12.09 // Insomnia

Insomnia from alex aloise on Vimeo.

View Comments / Apr 12.09 / Insomnia / by Alex Aloise

// Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock. Boom?


By Ben Cheney .
04.11.09 // Insomnia

The tick tock of a clock that sounds like the boom boom of a bass drum in the dark on a silent night is keeping me awake. It sounds like a time bomb, ready to explode at any moment.

Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock. Boom?

I can’t ignore it. No matter how hard I try. The tick tock just won’t go away.

I’m scared. What if it really is a time bomb? What if it blows me to smithereens?

I know the clock in question. I have seen it many times. I have held it many times. It’s smooth and brown and carved in the shape of a dog with funny ears and giant googly eyes. If it were a real dog it would be cute. But it could be a tiny time bomb and that’s not cute.

I won’t know if it’s a time bomb unless it explodes and blows me to smithereens. And until then, I will lay awake on a pillow made of gold every night waiting for it to blow.

The tick tock of a clock that sounds like the boom boom of a bass drum in the dark on a silent night is keeping me awake for the rest of my life.

View Comments / Apr 11.09 / Insomnia / by Ben Cheney

// tupac said “picture me rollin’”

By Jake Dubs .
04.10.09 // Insomnia

well
i say “picture me lyin’”

so picture it
5 foot 10 178 pounds of brown eyes and brown hair
poking through a living breathing domicile
the only one of its kind
grasping inside it 24 years
of thoughts memories regrets
dreams ideas experiences
loves and loss and bad thoughts and good ones and good deeds and bad
countless déjà vus
innumerable moments of happiness
incalculable moments of sadness
more

it’s morning’s 3:47
and it’s all here
lying with me on a queen-sized bed
keeping me company in the dark
injecting this midnight daydream
with whatever makes me
me

outside
across a tiny world
four billion people
are living their lives
wide awake
like me
only my consciousness is an unwelcome guest
at this hour
because while i think of them

they think nothing of me

count sheep?
fuck counting sheep
half an hour more
and I’m going to be slaying fucking sheep
i think
as the multi-colored oddly-shaped marbles of thought
roll around my head
falling into a different hole
when I turn on my side
again
towards the bearer of neutral news
sitting on my night table.

there is nothing lonelier
at any hour
i think now
than watching the silent explosion
of glowing green numbers

in between their bursts
they dance around in darkness
for sixty seconds at a time
before jumping in or out of position
an insane and neverending construction and reconstruction
of digital number levels
making the un-crutched five into a sturdy six
or pulling apart a solid eight to reveal a top-heavy nine

I’m alone with these glowing green numbers

but as the clock hits 4:19
i stumble on this golden nugget:

being your own best friend amidst darkness
is the most unfaltering gift we’ve been given

View Comments / Apr 10.09 / Insomnia / by Jake Dubs

// You wanted a new drug?

By Jordan Childs .
04.09.09 // Insomnia

View Comments / Apr 09.09 / Insomnia / by Jordan Childs

// WHAT IT’S LIKE

By Tristan Smith .
04.07.09 // Insomnia

View Comments / Apr 07.09 / Insomnia / by Tristan Smith

// Paula Deen’s Butter Sleep

By Charles Hodges .
04.06.09 // Insomnia

View Comments / Apr 06.09 / Insomnia / by Charles Hodges

// You Are Sleep Fat!

By Joey Camire .
04.06.09 // Insomnia

Your body and brain have more potential than your fragile conscious takes advantage of.  There I said it.  I hope we can still be friends now that I’ve gotten that off my chest.  It’s just been weighing on me.  Oh you want some explanation?  God you are so needy!

The average life expectancy in the United States of America is roughly 77 years.  Now if you subtract the time you spend sleeping, assuming you slept an average of 7 hours a night, you would be left with 54 waking years of your life.  Seems like a long enough time right?  Wrong.

When I was in undergrad I was told by professor Dr. Michael Turvey, an award winning neuro-scientist, that the brain has the capacity to store 10,000 years of memories.  He said that was a conservative number. And here we are, caught with our proverbial dicks in our hands, sleeping away 22 years of our lives.

Now we may never be able to reach our full potential of 10,000 years of memories, at least any time soon,   but we are still wasting a lot of what we have been given… literally on our backs.

I was thinking about this and it led me to believe that maybe Insomnia is some sort of evolutionary development we are not appreciating for what it’s worth.  We’re all acting like a bunch of modern day creationists scoffing right in the face of evolution.

Let’s think for a moment, what are insomniacs really missing out on by not sleeping/dreaming?

~Running really slow
~Falling like a feather
~Punching people like an arthritic geriatric woman with osteoporosis
~Waking up in the middle of the night to pee
~Clocks
~Morning wood
~The opportunity to blame your mid night flagrant fondling of your girlfriend on sleeping or as some call it “Midnight Molesting”
~Sheet wrinkles
~Nocturnal Emissions

While there may be a few positives in there, such as daily raging erections, I think we would be better off giving up on sleep.

We live in a culture that is in so many ways fighting the losing battle against the ever encroaching hand of death but when given something as precious as an additional 22 years of life to live, we simply sit on our hands?

There is something called “Polyphasic Sleeping”.  This method allows you to train your body to fall into REM sleep faster by sleeping in 20-30 minute naps every 4 hours and still gain the same rejuvenating effects of a typical night sleep. For those arithmetically inclined readers, that time totals about 3 hours of sleep every day.  That equates to reclaiming 13 years in a typical lifespan.  If someone appeared before you and told you you could add years to your life, what would you say?  Unless your have been listening to a lot of old Dashboard Confessional CDs, I’m assuming you would say “yes”.

I want to get a group of people together to test this idea in a social experiment.  If a group of people started doing this, what could they get done with those extra 61 days in a single year?  With the extra year they would get back every six years?

Today, I am 24 years old and I’ve acquired a lot of experience in my life.  Today at 24 years old, if I started using “Polyphasic Sleep”, I would be able to live an almost full typical lifespan of waking years.  For all intents and purposes I could live a full life starting today, as if I were born now in this moment. I could have a full life ahead of me.  Why aren’t we doing this?  We’ve grown sleep fat, consuming countless hours of sleep we don’t need, sleep obesity has become an epidemic.

Think about it.

View Comments / Apr 06.09 / Insomnia / by Joey Camire