Malinda Words: In the delirium of my insomnia

In The Book of Embraces Eduardo Galeano wrote, ‘I can't sleep. There is a woman stuck between my eyelids. I would tell her to get out if I could. But there is a woman stuck in my throat.’

Reading it, I smiled. And cried. I’ve known of people afflicted with that immemorial condition. It robs sleep. It silences.

I don’t know the name of the woman who would not let Eduardo sleep. I don’t know what she looked like, whether she ever uttered a word and if so whether the words she strung together and the way she spoke them soothed or corroded Eduardo’s heart. I don’t know if Eduardo got to sleep thereafter. Well, he’s gone now, leaving words and hearts behind in different stages of decay and regeneration. All I know is that Eduardo made me smile because, at that time, when I read Eduardo’s note on sleeplessness, I could not sleep either.

So I wrote to Eduardo.

She's fragile, Eduardo,
like tomorrow.
and flawed like the revolution,
scarred like the map of my country
and yours too, Eduardo.

Oh yes, we both knew of imperfection. All kinds of imperfection, in fact. We knew, as others did and do, that even as we are dazzled by the corporeal light emanating from countenance, there were moments when we could move beneath the garment called skin, breathe the air of those incomparable lungs and touch a heart that palpated just as ours did.

And so I continued to write.

I walk endlessly in the delirium of my insomnia,
I can't forget, for my eyes are a barred gate
that refuses amnesia.
She's stuck in my throat, Eduardo,
and it is not that I want to ask her to leave,
need I even say?

They leave, sooner or later, those who keep eyelids open and throats clogged. They leave or they stay. They stay because they can no longer sleep and they can’t say ‘leave’ because somehow we’ve invaded and occupied their throats. When this happens, we don’t have to say ‘leave,’ for there’s unspoken agreement: we shall share our wakeful hours and we shall together embrace slumber.

The 8th Century Chinese poet Li Po once wrote,

The birds have vanished into the sky
and now the last cloud drains away.

We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.

[‘Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain,’ translated by Sam Hamill, in Crossing the Yellow River: Three Hundred Poems from the Chinese.]

So, even if there’s togetherness (and sleep), it ends. People leave to other geographies, they pass through gates that are locked thereafter forever. We stand at gates that will not open. We sit with mountains and then mountains sit alone. And it happens the other way too: we are taken through gates and cannot return to territories of love and slumber. I do not know what lies beyond and whether insomnia has been outlawed in that hereafter or, indeed if that is the singular condition legislated there.

Tonight, though, a girl who once glanced at me through a mirror and took my breath away, floated down from a sky elegantly decorated with clouds and stood before me holding a jar containing all the words that had been written and said.

She emptied the jar upon a cloth woven with the threads of nostalgia and the words arranged themselves into a poem titled My Absence, with a disclaimer, ‘with apologies to the Spanish poet Pedro Salinas y Serrano.’

I am not here. What you see of me,
a body, is a shadow, a trick.
My soul has gone where I

myself will be tomorrow.
Still this afternoon offers you
false hostage, aimless
smiles, idle gestures,
a love distracted.
I wanted to go and it took me
where I wanted to be,
far from here, where I
am saying to you,
‘Here you are, with me, look!’
And I point to my absence.

Eduardo, I do not know which gates opened to you so you could wander in dreamscapes or turn into a tree, mountain, manuscript or mirror. I could say these words and maybe someone will understand, but Eduardo, I’m convinced that you will be among those who will smile. And cry and smile and smile and cry, as I did, years ago when I read your words.

I can’t sleep, Eduardo. You know why.

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 293rd article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below]

14 December 2023

In the delirium of my insomnia

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