It is 02.57 and I've given up on trying to get to sleep. I suffer from periods of insomnia that may last for two or three nights and sometimes for several weeks; they end as unexpectedly as they begin. Tonight, or rather this morning, I thought I would look up what other people have said about insomnia and discovered dozens of quotations. I'll post a few here and maybe I'll find an unexpected remedy!
A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by
One after one; the sound of rain, and bees
Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds and seas,
Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky -
I've thought of all by turns, and still I lie
Sleepless...
~William Wordsworth, "To Sleep"
The worst thing in the world is to try to sleep and not to. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald
Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it's time to get up. ~Author Unknown
O sleep, O gentle sleep,
Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down
And steep my sense in forgetfulness?
~William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I
Even thus last night, and two nights more I lay,
And could not win thee, Sleep, by any stealth:
So do not let me wear to-night away.
Without thee what is all the morning's wealth?
Come, blessed barrier between day and day,
Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!
~William Wordsworth, "To Sleep"
Sleeplessness is a desert without vegetation or inhabitants. ~Jessamyn West
I find sleeplessness frustrating and so cannot agree with this writer:
It's at night, when perhaps we should be dreaming, that the mind is most clear, that we are most able to hold all our life in the palm of our skull. I don't know if anyone has ever pointed out that great attraction of insomnia before, but it is so; the night seems to release a little more of our vast backward inheritance of instincts and feelings; as with the dawn, a little honey is allowed to ooze between the lips of the sandwich, a little of the stuff of dreams to drip into the waking mind. I wish I believed, as J. B. Priestley did, that consciousness continues after disembodiment or death, not forever, but for a long while. Three score years and ten is such a stingy ration of time, when there is so much time around. Perhaps that's why some of us are insomniacs; night is so precious that it would be pusillanimous to sleep all through it! A "bad night" is not always a bad thing.
~Brian W. Aldiss
I'm far more in tune with Dorothy Parker:
How do people go to sleep? I'm afraid I've lost the knack. I might try busting myself smartly over the temple with the night-light. I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember any of the damn things.
If anyone has a cure for insomnia, please let me know. Meanwhile I'm going back to bed to try again ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.