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Exploring Awareness - Just for you
North Miami Beach, FL May 17, 2002
A.H. Schectman
THINKING ALLOWED
Essays on Issues, Ideas and Reflections on the Times. Published now and
then. Opinions pro or con are welcome
Exploring Awareness
I spent last night not in sleep but in an intermittent and serial
state of non-sleep where my eyes were closed but in constant motion trying
to find a picture or a condition or a spot where I could rest - this also
while I was acutely aware my mind was seeking a comfortable position of body
and an accepting mode of being awake that would quickly and efficiently
drift off into that wonderful giving up the "raveled sleeve of care" that we
abandon when sleep envelopes us. I know this sounds like "stream of
consciousness" writing for I read "Ulysses" once all the way through and
revisited it several times to dip into it for the good parts and I
sympathized with James Joyce's character, Leopold Bloom, for his discomfort
with being "aware" and the subject of his creator's exploration. It was so
long ago that I read this book and never thought of the style as a
possibility for personal expression and I never tried it before although
last night not in sleep but in a continual and not uncomfortable state of
being I was almost aware of everything that was really not happening except
in my mind that was moving back and forth, this way and that way, to get the
release that is sleep - my body uncomfortable in its prison of aches and
pains staying in the "wrong" position where arthritis and old mistakes in
falling from my bike or even earlier in the accident while skiing up in New
Hampshire that really did a number on my sciatic nerve basically on my left
side even though my right side gets the benefit of being painfully aware at
times that I am still alive but slipping in and out of near agony and
familiar discomfort and sometimes in the grip of cramps in my foot that I
cannot stand - on and hands wringing on shins, calves and thighs that become
rock hard and so painful that there is no peace. I think it is the peace of
sleep that I sought during that long night that just ended and I could not
wait for the red numbers on the clock on the chest opposite the bed to inch
toward the time that I normally find I must put on my glasses and swing
(carefully so that no cramps come to clench my flesh) my legs to the floor
and maneuver the steps I must go through to get upright without becoming
dizzy and having to put my head down below my knees a difficult thing to do
while joints protest and hit out at me to show displeasure of being released
from that state which was not sleep but very, very aware.
I explored awareness all night long and was amazed that my
determination to sleep could not bring me peace and unconsciousness for more
than a few minutes at a time and once winning alertness where I saw that
several hours had passed although it seemed I had twisted and turned
continually and eternally without achieving that which I sought - not
desperately and not particularly painfully but - with this awareness that I
was forced to endure because unawareness would not come. I wanted to sleep
and I wanted at the same time to record exactly the thoughts that flowed
through my mind and the feelings in my body so that when I would have to get
up because that was my routine throughout my life from my twenties onward
although when a youth I could sleep like the dead from eight at night
through to twelve noon the next day and still not get enough - but I guess
now I am rectifying the record and there are nights that I cannot turn off
the stream of thoughts that sometimes reviews the way I will write this,
choose the solution to a problem, plot the steps of making those shelves in
the narrow closet at the end of my office furniture and just knowing that
the "tingling" or vibration that goes on in mind AND body is part of this
thing I am exploring - awareness.
I remember thinking that my pillow had developed a hard ridge and
was hurting the base of my skull so I punched it up and fluffed it but I
could not regain the exact right location that would, with my left ear
pressed into it and my left arm under it, to make it possible to lie on my
left side allowing my right arm and hand to trace the outlines of the wooden
side of my end table in the hope that this would allow sleep "to take me".
During the night I got up only once and felt that I shouldn't have to do
this since I slept through the whole night yesterday and felt betrayed when
the result was a piddling amount of piddle.
I didn't know how this would turn out and I don't particularly
care but I do know where it came from for an impending operation will do
this for a person. I shut off my reading light at about eleven last night
and tried to sleep but although I was never aware of nervousness in the days
leading up to morning that I would get up at my usual time at just before
six a.m. my sleep was full of awareness, not of the operation, but that I
was awake - not asleep - and I could not achieve the rest that I looked
forward to - to put me at ease in anticipation of the whole thing. I spent
the night thinking of the words to describe my awareness of what was
happening and came up with this and I'd rather not go through it again.
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