Grapes 2.0: Time's wingèd chariot

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I decided to come back over here after posting this to my main blog:

I came in from work to an empty house, and fell asleep -- bad idea -- on the couch. Woke up with a sense of melancholy, as after a crying dream. The other day you spoke about going away, and now I felt that the time was already upon us. The world stretches out in front of the young, to the far horizon. Time telescopes as you get older, and every future falls within reach. It doesn't matter how long it's going to be, in my eyes it's already here. Andrew Marvell, in his marvellous poem To His Coy Mistress, writes:

But at my back I always hear

Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near

Read the rest of it here.

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Update:

Sleep didn’t come, partly because I’d slept in the evening.

When I was a child I was afraid to fall asleep, because I suffered from nose-bleeds. I’d wake up in the morning with the metallic taste of money in my mouth, and one eye glued shut because of the blood that had pooled in the hollow of my pillow. Naturally, that’s a traumatic experience for a child, and even when it becomes habitual, you still know that’s the essence of your living being that’s been leaking out of you. You still have to be cleaned up by your mother. You still go around for the rest of the day with the smell and taste of your own blood. That’s something that’s normally only associated with major trauma.

Now the fear of sleep is not the fear of blood, it’s the fear of thought. Last night, as you can see, I was preoccupied with the loss of a loved one. In this case, the future loss of a loved one. My point was, future or present makes no difference: a loss once dreamed of becomes actual. At a certain stage of life all time becomes contemporaneous, and the future and present cannot be distinguished. It’s enough that a loss be possible, for it to become actual.

In the minutes and hours between lying down and sleep coming, there’s time to think about all of that. As such, it’s something to be avoided. It’s enough that things should be so, without our seeking to contemplate them as well. Knowing a thing, and thinking about it, is a compounding of the injury.

The solution would be to go to bed only when one is so exhausted that all dread night-time thoughts are impossible. I haven’t yet found the recipe for that potion. All suggestions gratefully welcomed.

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