morpheus my brother
Rise up, rise up oh sleepyhead..
Some people wake early in the morning, while others sleep late. My idea of normality is a little light breakfast before eleven, and some blogging with a glass of wine at three in the morning.
Why is this so? as Professor Julius Sumner Miller asked a generation enthralled with the idea that it was cool to be nerdy, long before the relentless wash of transistors revealed the white collar drone as the temporary king of the employee universe.
It seems completely counter-intuitive. We are equipped with eyesight that works best in the day, and circadian rhythms that drag our energy levels down before dawn. For tens of thousands of years we rose with the sun, laboured together in the dawn, probably slept after lunch, and came to life as the sun passed its prime. In the night, we put out the zeds except for the sentries listening for lions, wolves or the bad peeps in the next valley.
It is easy to see an interim habit, in which those freed from toil woke up late to find their servants preparing the perfect kedgeree, having (cue romantic images of household oppression here) moved the pot from beneath their four poster beds hours before and scrubbed milady’s skirt ends with pumice until their fingers froze. Or ploughed young master’s field with their teeth and wiped his horses’ arses with their new-born children.
It is a shock to read colonial accounts of households short of tallow candles and scrimping to be able to maintain a light to read at night.
Somewhere in there, people like me got completely habituated to going to bed late. When I was a kid, I could fall asleep in the morning leaning on the bus stop on the way to school. And (cue shudder from fellow South Australians) we are talking about Stobey poles.
Perhaps reading is one of the keys. I wouldn’t be surprised if early risers habitually read less, while the true night wanderers spent years staying up just another few minutes to cram another thrilling chapter into their fiction-addicted brains. But then, I know people who are zooming around at sparrow’s fart even though they read prodigiously, and are dazed with lack of sleep cos they too stayed up to cram.. etc.
I don’t understand it. I do know that I am a terrible procrastinator, and run a small mental tape which instructs me on the day’s necessities, and then insists I do them “before I go to bed”, even if it is three in the morning. But that may just be a personal expression of a more basic biological fact – I sleep well, but only if I go to bed late. Or indeed, it could be because I keep “exciting my brain” as my disapproving mother would put it, and can’t sleep till I calm my organ of cogitation by sheer exhaustion and the gradual insistence of my circadian clock.
Truth to tell, my declining energy levels late at night now wreck my ability to concentrate anyway. Age is taking its toll. I keep telling myself I have no alternative but to become a day person, which would give me all that extra time to relate to people in the morning – and ambush other sleepyheads with my demands before they have the strength to resist. And I know I actually enjoy a long day of physical activity, as when I go camping.
Mind you, I have caused legendary astonishment in fellow bushwalkers because I can sleep past ten am, still wrapped in my sleeping bag, in a tent which is vibrating with heat, without even the excuse of drunkenness. If I didn’t wake up to piss, I would probably sleep forever. hearing impairment makes a difference, of course. If you don’t shake me, I don’t wake.
All inspired by a funny post at Paddy K, who brings a Swedish and I guess Irish slant to the problem.
September 4th, 2007 at 11:33 pm
I’m with you David. I have somehow never felt right reading fiction during the day. It’s like going to the movies during the day – there’s something a little bit wicked about it. However, I combine my late night reading and writing with reasonably early dog walking. Maybe that is the reason for the constant humming tiredness all day. I thought it was just the ravages of time!
September 5th, 2007 at 7:40 am
Lovely post David. Its just a bugger that I’m reading it at 6.40am and have to get a ‘move on’.
September 5th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
I postulate that your assertion that night is for sleeping is incorrect. I argue that the night is for fiction and that is just possibly what made us human.
We don’t inhabit the world like other creatures – we are bound to it by our flesh and blood but we spend most of our time in a mental space – shared by common language with others. We inhabit a landscape of symbols and mental imagery.
At one point in our 2 million year evolution since out split from a common ancestor with chimps Homo erectus learned to control fire, invented new stone tool technology significantly better that that which had been essentially unchanged for nearly a million years and suddenly displayed a hugely enhanced range of behaviours – the so called great leap forward.
Think about it, in terms of the stone tool technology we used to get by countless generations had gone about the business of being human, or at least being habilis and later erectus in essentially the same way as that of preceding generations stretching back so far the metronome tick of the passing generations needs to be measured in geological time. The patterns of the stars in the sky would be unrecognisably changed over such vast time scale.
By no means had we stopped evolving – but whatever slow incremental changes were occurring in response to slowly changing climate and other factors pale into insignificants with what was about to happen: We started talking around the campfire at night.
This precipitated a cascade of changes that ultimately lead to us.
Others have speculated on the detail in far more detail than I have time to cover in my morning blog break: http://uuhemet.org/evolution%20brain.html
September 5th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
All I know is I got up at 6.30 yesterday and 6 today, and it’s killing me.
But yeah, I’ll stay up too late reading again. And everyone will be late for school tomorrow because ‘mum slept in’.
September 5th, 2007 at 9:17 pm
cyberslacker and unique-stephen: the night is for dreaming, and there are more paths to dreaming than mere sleep.
Barista, so you’re part of the great Adelaide diaspora too?
September 5th, 2007 at 11:15 pm
Some hours later, its been a big day and I’m growing sleepy. Ah bliss. But before I go into the Land of Nod, I wanted to say how I love the deathly stillness of 2am when most other minds, are zzzzzing away, leaving the ether freed up, quiet and still. There’s so much more space, and its dark. But so too do I love the dawn, I like to get up at sparrow’s, dash around doing plenty and have a day’s work done by 9.00. Dilemma. So I have in mind to one day keep the following hours, I will need to live in a city in a sound and light proofed room.
12:30 pm- time for bed. Sleep away the afternoon–guiltlessly. Utterly guiltlessly.
7:00-8.00 pm arise, to do whatevers.
8.30-9.00pm start writing. Write till 1 or 2 then goof off, or keep writing, (who cares?) 5.00am-ablute, find a spot to greet the day. Watch the sunrise, go for a walk, gaze in awe at the peak hour crush, find a convival place for coffee and ‘breakfast’. Home by 9.00am — goof off some more, do some washing (perhaps?) & get ready for bed.
Goodnight, sweet dreams.
September 6th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
I seem to have been programmed with a 24.5 hour day. Regardless of how much sleep I get, my instinct always seems to be to arise half an hour later than I did the day before. Getting up at the same time each morning seems to require a constant battle against nature. Back when my workday typically started at 7pm and finished at 11pm, I’d sleep from 4am until 2pm, and then only get up because lunch in Adelaide can be tricky to buy by mid-afternoon.
September 6th, 2007 at 7:48 pm
Clearly the odd man out. Awake at 4 most mornings, turn the computer on sometime in the 1st half hour to cruise the morning news and a few essential blogs, followed by a swim at 5.30 with a bunch of other ageing insomniacs. At work by 7am and home by 5 to put the dinner on.
My greatest joy is to hit bed at about 8:30 for an hours read. Some people think I’m a freak but it feels perfectly normal to me…..
September 7th, 2007 at 12:31 am
Dan, Mars has a day length of 24 hours 39 minutes and some seconds.
Are you also plagued by bouts of telekinesis, periods of invisibility or little antennae emerging from the rear of your cranium?
September 8th, 2007 at 9:30 pm
I can swing both ways with this. But I’m getting better at going to bed around 9, reading, then getting up a bit earlier if required to read some more. One day I’ll go back to getting up at 5 to write – that’s a great part of the day if you can get it.
September 8th, 2007 at 9:31 pm
And btw, very nice post, and lovely graphic.
March 11th, 2009 at 2:41 am
Nice post but the breakfirst should be around 7 . I am so tired .