Ode to Insomnia

There’s no reason for me to be awake. Everyone always asks, “Why can’t you sleep, Devin? What’s on your mind?” as if it’s that simple. What do I think about? Absolutely nothing, really …and everything. I think about the texture in the ceiling, wondering who first decided to put those little mini stalactites all over them. I run my fingers over my chin to hear the bristling of my copper-brown stubble. I list what movies I want to buy when I have the money. I think about the way my eyelids grind open and shut, wondering if a really sensitive microphone would pick up sounds from them like rusted garage doors. These are the pivotal issues that keep me awake at night.

At first, the insomnia was almost a blessing. I read a lot. I read a full series of Orson Scott Card Books, a bunch of Dick Frances novels, Orwell’s 1984, and Shopgirl, by Steve Martin. Now, my eyes are too fried to read anymore. I can’t focus on a page. I’m awake all the time, except maybe three or four hours a night before the alarm clock goes off. Still, with all those extra hours in the day, I get further behind in everything all the time. It’s been like this for months, now. Actually, for the first month or so I was lucky to get two hours of sleep per night.

I work late every day, now. It takes me 12 hours to do 7 hours worth of work. My brain is like a stale marshmallow from that ancient box of Lucky Charms in the back of the pantry. I suppose the low point was when a coworker asked me if I was on drugs. The answer, of course, was no, but that very night I bought several bottles of various sleep-aids. I figured something had to be done. None of them work, separately or combined, not even when washed down with ample servings of Miller High Life.

I started training in boxing. Yes, boxing. There was one girl in the class and I think even she was progressing faster than I was. My pasty white cubicle-accustomed arms wore out pretty fast, but I kept at it. The plan was to let exercise exhaust me so I’d sleep. It sounded like a smart plan, but maybe I should have just asked Pedro Juarez to hit me once in the jaw. That might have worked better.

After a few months, the ceiling nubs got really tired of me staring at them. I hated their smug blank whiteness, always looking down on me like that. Just seeing them made me angry. I had to get out of my apartment. Unfortunately, my car was as likely to move as I was to sleep like a Nyquil commercial. I couldn’t afford to fix it. I couldn’t really go asking for a raise, either, after going in to work unshaved and zombie-like day after day. So, I just walked.

The coffee shop was only a block from my place, but I had a good 15 years on most of the clientele, from the looks of them. Most of them were college kids, the guys all sporting various creative facial hair patterns. I caught myself staring through the window way too long, wondering what sort of calico beard one could assemble out of the goatees, mutton-chops, Amish-looking under-the-chin hedges and what have you. Some of the sparse and scruffy faces looked like perfect mascots for the shop, since the name was “The Ugly Mug Café”. I chuckled as I walked on another four blocks to the bars. I saw some drunk karaoke singers. I drank some cheap beer. None of the bars had any decent food at all, but they were more interesting than searching for patterns in the plaster-stubble of my ceiling at home.

I’ve never been one for the night-scene. Even in my college days, I didn’t much care for bar-hopping with the boys. I preferred a quite night at home with a really good book, a rented movie, and a Stouffer’s meatloaf dinner (or two). I like a good beer, like any other self-respecting three-quarters-Irish man. I just prefer it at home, enjoyed from the comfort of my favorite rust colored recliner. Some people swear that beer and cigarettes were made for each other. I consider beer and fiction a better match any day. It’s no wonder my father gave up on the nickname “Scrapper” and replaced it with “Bookworm” by the time I was twelve. He was still calling me that up until he passed 5 years ago.

So, at forty-two I found myself among the all-night partiers, trolling for ways to pass my sleepless nights. One night, my feet were just too blistered to make all five blocks to the bars. I sighed out my pride, pushed open the Café door, and entered the beatnik hive – the coffee house. The stale cigarette smell was familiar enough, but the conversation there was less slurred. It was more like rapid-fire chatter from shaky, chain-smoking, caffeine junkies. Most of the girls were pretty, but way too young for me. With all the short hair styles and baggy pants, it was hard to tell which ones were straight anyway.

I ordered plain coffee, of which they had five kinds, or “blends”. I sat in a corner for a few hours and listened to the “poets” on stage. The closest I ever came to poetry before that, other than the lessons I slept through in high-school, was when I was 17 and had pneumonia. I read every decent book in the house. When I had nothing left to read, my younger sister, with dramatic ceremony and a twisted grin on her deceptively innocent face, presented me with a copy of “much ado about nothing”, by Shakespeare. She was obviously amused with herself for that one, but I was desperate and I had already read the tissue box, the vitamin C bottle, and all the Nyquil ingredients 3 times. So, I cracked open the book, disgustingly lavender as it was, and I began to read Shakespeare, which was the closest to poetry I’d ever ventured.

Every scene was probably more psychedelic than the author had intended, being projected through my highly medicated and fevered imagination, but the arguments were hilarious. The sarcasm was right up my alley, even if the language was a little too fancy. Those poets on stage at the café were nothing like that, though. The language was usually simple and conversational. They did throw in a few words like “juxtaposed” a little too often, but for the most part it was just guttural ranting. In fact, I soon learned they even called it “slam-poetry”, or something like that.

Most of them followed a simple pattern. They’d repeat whatever they wanted to dramatize, usually three times. They would get loud at some point. They would punctuate phrases with carefully timed drags off of clove cigarettes. They would usually say something blasphemous or iconoclastic at some point to make them seem daring, as if they were breaking new ground, but they all did it. There are generally some comments about God being on the john when the world needed him, or promises to dance on all our graves, or at least some references to something taboo, like something blatantly sexual or grotesque. Nearly all of them had the walk, the slow stroll up to the microphone and the pensive stare-down glare over it before reading. There were exceptions to this. A couple girls shuffled up shyly, looking back at their crews at least twice for encouragement.

The most pretentious ones, while least impressive with words, were the most captivating. I marveled at the way the audience ate up the act. I imagined that one boy’s elegantly brandished Marlboro-light was a conductor’s wand, or perhaps just the watch of a hypnotist. I think the calculated movements of that glowing butt were the center of his power to mesmerize the room into finding his words deep and meaningful. It sounded like a load of crap to me, but then maybe cigarette-hypnotism only works on the young. Maybe if he were waving pot roast and mashed potatoes, I’d be his number one fan.

Of course that thought made me hungry, so I dared check the chalkboard for food. I was reluctant to try chili in a coffee-house, but it was the meatiest looking thing on the list, so long as I didn’t order the “veggie-vegan” kind. They offered both versions. That bowl changed everything. I blame and thank that greasy bowl for everything that happened since. The bowl was plain, cracked, off-white stoneware, but the stuff that was inside it was incredible. It was the best chili I ever tasted, meaty and thick and full of flavor with enough spice to wake me up, but not enough to really hurt.

The next night, after work and a TV dinner, I piddled around the apartment as long as I could stand it, but eventually had to escape. I walked past the café and hit the nearest bar. I was determined to get sleepy, so I chugged beer like it was the only antidote to a deadly poison. If insomnia was the poison, then beer was a rotten antidote. It didn’t make me sleepy, just off-balance. It also made the room blurry and unsteady. After a while, I was hungry again. I couldn’t stomach the thought of more luke-warm jalapeño poppers, so I waddled back to the café for that scrumptious chili. It was good. It was just so very good. I was happy… happy and drunk off my butt.

I listened to the poets again, this time writing down the repeating traits on a napkin, listing the cigarette wand and the dramatic drags, the way the women waved their sexuality like flags of independence. I studied the way they spoke… with long, poignant pauses, always followed by the stare. I observed, and I scribbled. I guess being a guy who’s had his nose in books all his life, it’s just in my nature to put things on paper.

That’s when it happened. The organizer looked around, biting her lip, leaning into the regulars and whispering at them. Then, she walked right over to me.

“Hi” she said, with way too friendly a grin to be looking at me.

“Hello” I answered, hoping the chili covered the smell of beer.

“Um, we’re looking for more readers if you’d like to sign up” she said nervously, but still smiling. “we’re supposed to go for another hour or two at least, and I’m kinda out of names”.
A damsel in distress? She stood there, smiling at me, smelling like some sort of incense, something woody and sweet.

“I don’t really write” I said. She glanced at the napkin under my hand, then back at me again.

“Uh, that’s just… that wasn’t anything” I muttered. She looked so disappointed, then started scanning the room again with a rather hopeless look on her young face. “Well, I can do something, I guess, but I’m no poet”.

She grinned and thanked me, motioning me up to the stage.
What the heck did I just agree to? I thought. I tripped onto the stage, still too drunk to really focus. I walked up, smiled over the mic, and spoke.

“Hey there” I smirked. The cute organizer girl smiled back, but looked either nervous, frightened or disgusted. I wasn’t sure which. I looked at the napkin still in my hand. I had already written out the formula. How hard can it be? Just follow the recipe. I didn’t have any cigarettes, but I could say something sacrilegious easily enough. With that organizer girl looking at me, I figured I could think of something blatanly sexual too. I can do this –I think.

“I’m gonna read you guys a poem” I said, in my coolest voice, part Jack Nicholson and part John Wayne. “it’s called…. Uh, yeah... It’s called…” …think… think. “…How to be a Poet”. Yeah, that’s it.

“Fuck the masses.
Fuck the pope.
Make a sign on the air
with a camel-wide stroke;
a glowing ember firefly
to captivate your eyes
while my words evade,
tirade, pause…
to…
emphasize….
Because, you see, these thoughts
take time to grasp the sense…
A self-important soliloquy
saying nothing,
…but styled…
…with pretense.”
I made the essential confident, meaningful eye-contact after the last word, while privately thinking how much that sucked. It was all I could do not to laugh, but I didn’t. Part of delivering a good joke is keeping a straight face, after all, and that poem was a joke. Then, they applauded. They applauded madly, nodding as if I’d said something important. The pretty girl with the list of names smiled at me, and I sat back down, stunned.

I sat silent for another hour, while the organizer filled time with her own poetry, between the occasional coercion of other readers. I tried to analyze why they clapped so hard. Was it sympathy? Was it confusion? Was it pity for the old man? Did my age make me seem wiser than I am? It boggled my mind. After another bowl of chili, I walked home. My belly was full, my body warm from alcohol and spice, my mind full and busy. I slept like a baby for the last few hours before my alarm went off.

The next day was the same as usual in the rat-maze hell I call work. I guess it isn’t a bad job, it’s just blank; blank white paper, glaring white computer screens, blank grey cubicle walls that looked nearly white in the blaring florescent light. The work is ok, but just that. It isn’t bad enough to make for good stories or even for a decent complaint about “my hard day”. It isn’t good enough to look forward to in any way. It’s white, with texture that repeats, randomly but without style. My job is one of those damned prickly plaster ceilings; normal, boring, and abrasive.

Soon, I found myself scribbling words that came to mind on a “while you were out” message pad beside my computer, the computer I lovingly refer to as “Hal from Hades”. Then, I was ranting on paper about coworkers, women, managers, even the crappy lunch off the sandwich cart. I guess my mind had been frayed from a rope, tied to the task at hand, to a thousand little threads all going in different directions. I had the same amount of thought going as usual, but sleep deprivation had taken all cohesion out of it. I had no control over my own mind. It rambled on about anything and everything, but I could focus it on nothing. I started writing poems in Word when I should have been compiling technical data. I started a blog under a fake name, “TheAntiPoet”, when I should have been updating spreadsheets in Excel. I was so far behind that I was literally in fear for my job, but I could not seem to bridle my brain. I could lead my head to water, staring at the printouts, but I could not make it think.

I told myself that I returned to the café for that delicious chili, but that was only part of it, albeit a tasty part. I took the stage more and more often. I griped about everyday things, playfully weaving words together for rhythm, clarity, ambiguity, and impact. I got better at it, though I wasn’t sure if that was something to be proud or ashamed of. I vented. I cursed. I gradually got more involved in putting the words together in ways that I liked, rather than just complaining onstage. I became a freakin poet.

I stopped going to the café every night. Sometimes I stayed home to write. Some things that I began as poems I rewrote in paragraph form and discovered that they were more like scenes than poems. Then I realized that, despite all my avid reading through the years, I’d never considered writing. Am I too old to learn? Is the language already there from taking it in for so long? Can one learn to be a chef just from being a glutton? It had to be worth trying. If practice led to anything worth while, maybe I could take some classes. Maybe I could write spy novels or science fiction. I’ve read a lot of those genres. Maybe not, maybe something smaller, like short stories. But then, I never read many short stories. Wouldn’t they take a different sort of writing?

I suddenly found myself full of ideas for story lines. I wasn’t sure if any of them were any good, but I didn’t much care. My first few stories were probably just going to be learning experiences anyways. I just started writing. Some nights I turned out twenty pages, some nights only three. I created a plan for myself, typed it up and hung it on the wall next to my pc. “1) write regularly: Try to write 10+ pages at least 4 nights per week. 2) complete at least two cohesive stories. 3) read books on writing (start with King’s on Writing) 4) take a writing course in the evenings.” Etc…

I was spending a lot of time at home, so I cleaned the place up. I painted the living room a green color that made me think of an old pub. I painted my bedroom walls in a rich saffron color and the ceiling in parchment. I bought a couple book cases and finally set out the rest of the books that I’d had in boxes for the past 4 years. I got a new computer chair, brown leather. It was the most expensive piece of furniture in my otherwise scavenger-style home, but somehow that seemed appropriate.

Maybe you have to make a place to unfold yourself inside your own mind, before you can belong in the world around you. Maybe I just had to become who I was meant to be, before I could keep on being. All that restlessness made perfect sense now. All that taut-wound throbbing of my psyche lately was just like the slowly increasing ache of a Chinese girl’s foot, bound tight and never allowed to grow.

I had a long way to go before my fiction-writing was worth reading. I knew that. I also knew that would change. Somehow I knew that I would write someday. I would write well. It sounds idiotic, no doubt, but it wasn’t’ as if I expected to become the next Grisham or King. I could enjoy my job, if I knew why I was supporting myself and sustaining myself. I could enjoy that bland rat-maze of cubicle walls and all it’s busy occupants if I knew my place among them. I was Devin, the writer in the last cube on third row. That blank, white, textured expanse that my job could be was just a page where I was free to be whatever word I chose.

I strolled into the office each day in Technicolor, 3-D. I felt defined. I described character ideas over the water-cooler and plot-lines over the ever-brewing Bunn coffee pot. The coffee seemed to take on a stale flavor, but that was likely a side-effect of sipping Blue Mountain blends so often on the weekends. I had, after all, become a staple of The Ugly Mug. I MC’d the readings on Thursday nights and participated in a short-fiction writers’ group that met there on Saturday evenings. Good coffee is, unfortunately, quite addictive. I tried bringing in a bag of quality fresh-ground fair-trade coffee to share with my coworkers, but after the tree-hugging hippie gay jokes died down I decided to brew it at home and bring in just a travel mug for myself. Sharing seemed unnecessary.

To people in the office, though, I became the coffee guru. When a new pot was needed, they asked me what kind to get. When brands were debated, I was asked to choose what should be ordered. Also, when important letters were written, I was asked for my opinion. When someone wanted a good book to read, they asked the bookworm which ones lived up to their hype. Funny, no one told them about Dad calling me that. No one had called me that in years. I hadn’t had a nickname. I was just dull Devin in just another cube. I liked being the bookworm, the writer.

My mother called the other day. She asked if I was sleeping any better. I said yes, and started to tell her about my plans of writing. I told her I finally knew who I was and what I wanted to do. I told her that all the reading I had done through the years was like breathing in, and I needed to exhale or I’d pop. I wanted to live my life taking words in and expelling them creatively, like my dad could turn smoke into artful shapes, O’s for most people, even hearts for mom, just by shaping it skillfully in his mouth. I wanted to do with words what he did with smoke, enjoy both taking it in, and letting it out.

“Are you smoking, now?” She said.

“No, Mother, you don’t understand. It’s just an illustration. I’m talking about writing. I’m a writer, mom. That’s who I was supposed to be”

“Devin, have you been drinking?”

“No, mom. I’m sorry. This must all sound very silly to you. I’m just excited. Just be happy for me. I’m happy. I found purpose, and I’m sleeping much better.”

“You’re forty-two and you just now found your purpose?”

“So I was slow, but it was a bit surprising. Dad didn’t even like to read, and here I realize I need to be a writer. Who’d have guessed that?”

“I named you Devin before you were even born, you silly child. You know it's Gaelic for Bard.”

“What? No, I didn’t know that. You never told me.”

“Some Gael you are. With all the reading you’ve done you didn’t find time to learn a scratch of Gaeilge, not even your own name.”

She soon steered the topic back to what Lula Mae had said at Bingo, and to complaining about how Brianna, my sister, refused to bring her any more beer. My mind was stuck on how my mom had known to name me Devin. I wasn’t sure, but I thought there might be a story in there somewhere. It wasn’t fiction, but it might make for a decent story. My mother was, after all, a bit on the nutty side. I got the auburn hair from her, although she was only half Irish. We eventually said our goodbye’s and I went to bed.

I laid awake at first, wondering if writers can really start out this way; bored office-workers with pointless lives who just wander into the wrong place for a good bowl of chili. I stared up into the darkness of the room but saw only the words in my head, timelines, scenes, characters…I drifted off to sleep in a maze of plans, questions, and ideas. I tried to fight it. I tried to stay awake. There was so much to think about, so many colorful ideas in my head. There was so much on my mind and so many reasons to stay awake, but my eyelids slipped shut and I drifted off to sleep. No need to get stuck in today... Tomorrow would be full enough.