Reiterating an initial, semi-conscious act of awakening from sleep each morning, we roughly cast off the covers before opening our eyes to meet the early-muted light of the bedroom. We then slide, painfully, to the right edge of the mattress and swing rather ungracefully, to an upright sitting position. After a brief time, our bare feet radially explore the cool wooden floor in search of warm slippers, often losing patience and rising barefoot. This daily, wake-up ritual is customarily concluded by the act of briskly scratching our head, bizarrely, even when not prompted to do so by some motivational scalp itch.
We continue to reprise our stereotypical morning performance, by sleepily, ambling over to the nearby bathroom, intent on achieving a measure of needed physical relief, and then washing our hands. The daily terpsichorean performance then continues with such steps as, brushing our teeth, showering, and when the mirror autocratically mandates, shaving. In accordance with our established performance protocol, we then dress for the coming day, depending on our intended activity.
The performance, cheerfully, continues in the kitchen with the ubiquitous and pleasant, folkloric ritual of making coffee, and toast (this time, a sesame bagel), consulting the refrigerator for milk for the coffee, butter, cheese, or jam (or all three), for application on the toasted bagel, and, lastly, to the cabinet for the pragmatic securing of a coffee cup and silverware.
It is a regular part of our signature morning performance, as we butter and dress our toasted bagel in anticipation of enjoying the morning meal, to routinely switch on the small kitchen television in a repeated and sleepy forgetfulness of its predictable function as a stark, dimensional “portal,” transitioning us from the intimately cozy, and unperturbed state of mind to the harsh reality of the troubled world existing beyond the finite dimensions of our breakfast table.
We are, once more, encouraged to recall the poetically incisive statement of the protagonist in “Macbeth” written by the greatest playwright and poet, of all time, William Shakespeare: “… Sleep, that ravels up the ragged sleeve of care.” An aesthetically beautiful and concise, poetic, analogy, and one that is irrefutably, and ubiquitously valid; empirically, at least for a circumscribed time.
As we now, unsettlingly, sip our coffee and partake of our breakfast we are once more, grimly reminded of the contemporary mix of horribles, internationally: the Russian aggression against Ukraine, the Hamas barbaric attack on Israel, the Houthi terrorism against our shipping, the famine and wars in Ethiopia, the growing right-wing influence and autocracy in Europe, the suicidal disbelief of Global warming, and, nationally: by the cogent threat to democracy imposed by Trump and his cultish MAGA hordes, the persistence of White Christian Nationalist militias, and the era’s ubiquitous bigotry regarding gender identity, the wrongful denial of women’s right to abortion, anti-Semitism, gross deceit of the evangelicals, the systemic injustice of the Criminal Justice System, the steep and shameful decline of SCOTUS, Covid, economic injustice, the toll in human lives caused by the absence of gun regulation, widespread voter interference, inflation and dire poverty, disability and incurable disease, the emotional disabilities caused by cell-phone communication in lieu of human interaction, atavistic and cruel capital punishment and an uncountable myriad of others.
The escape from the daytime nightmares of reality (Shakespeare’s “raveled sleeve”) universally offered by sleep is ephemeral (no more than approximately eight hours) and pragmatically a mere temporary postponement of the painful, but healthier, acceptance of reality. After washing and drying our coffee cup, with lips tightly expressive, we determinatively reach for our phone.
The act of temporal avoidance or diversion from the disturbing phenomena extant in the Nation and the World is acceptable, even, salutary, provided the same is not eternally utilized as a convenient or defensive denial of reality. After escapist sleep and a buttered bagel breakfast, we need to affirmatively strive to achieve solutions to humanity’s problems; rather than to irresponsibly, dedicate ourselves to a facile, temporal reliance on an oasis in the middle of an unrelenting hot and lethal desert.
*Thanks to Henry Roth, for the use of the title of his fine novel, “Call It Sleep.”
-p.
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