Falling asleep has never struck me as a very natural thing to do. There is a surreal trickiness to traversing that in-between area, when the grip of consciousness is slipping but has not quite let go and curious mutated thoughts pass as normal cogitation unless snapped into clear light by a creaking door, or one's bed partner shifting position on the remarkably noisy sheets. The little fumbling larvae of nonsense that precede dreams' uninhibited butterflies are disastrously exposed to a light they cannot survive, and one must begin again, relaxing the mind into unravelling. Consciousness of the process balks it; the brain, watching itself, will not close its thousand eyes. The brain, circling the cell of wakefulness, panics at the poverty of its domain - these worn-out obsessions, these threadbare word games, these pointless grievances, these picayune plans for tomorrow which yet loom, hours from execution, as unbearably momentous. Life itself, that agitation of electrified molecules, becomes a captivity, a hellish endless churning, in which one is as alone as Satan, twisting and turning and boring a conical hole in the darkness, while on every side the wide world gently, blessedly snores.
--John Updike, from "Falling Asleep Up North"
Now if you warrin and runnin from them three-six niggas This forty-five gon give a reason to sleep, nigga Or bustin massive round some s.k. My last trip to a-t-l I fucked yo cascade Im strippin bitches and ima ball fucker with a limp They call me infer-stripper, sexy, red hoes pimp And quick to sink her on the nigga cause this what its bout We rob that trick and stick his dick off in his fuckin mouth We memphis niggas
--DJ Paul, from "Go to Sleep"
Sleep
Where did I leave that pen I'm stealing it's finally time to write to get a job you know how the sun starts humming and such a lousy prospect cryptogrammic grammar gumming up the gears round these parts we don't know shit. You ain't shit.
If I could wake up and know I'm coming down I know I won't wake up no one wakes up we read about movies rather than watch I want to (watch) write the back of movies you'll feel better. Certain. You need it. You are the worry I move about. The orange shirt I don't have don't hate me don't hurry. You need it. Care in the action such a lousy route through Milwaukee why would I go there I'm such a liar all I know are lies and I know it doesn't even matter I'm just filling in the shell, the fetish of originality, walking in, maybe it won't be a lazy day I will get out and I'm a liar, hear.
Drawing is funner. I'm failing. Feel on purpose. Why won't we ever billow out and get caught in the thin wires left by birds insect trails assisting tit for tat please love me it can't get much lower here than sitting read me a poem about the book I hit my head against last night in your bed. Neither of us ever knew how to sleep.
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