Blake Butler: Nothing: A Portrait of Insomnia

Even in more prolonged, intense phases, the sphere can come uncircled. “A person who becomes disorganized due to acute distress is likely to accept his psychotic experiences as real. .. The person may feel that he is ‘losing his mind,’ but unlike experimental subjects, he cannot leave the experiment. He is therefore suggestible and may accept his experiences, particularly if they provide an ‘explanation’ for, or a relief from, a difficult situation.”10 In this way, too, the memory might flicker, confusing waking rooms with memory and film, obfuscating where one has and has not been, in what way, with what markers set upon the flesh as ridges, and as color, as text inside a book that will not desist in its shift. The repeated rooms of waking, leaving, outdoors, indoors, transportation, evening light begin to betray their minor differences in repetition, the angles seeming each day to form the same boxes and expanses, air, but under the certain tutelage of dream context find little divots, smearings, burps (the dream replacing day space like a mask). The world in wormwood, in hidden liquid, known as trance — these tendencies, however hidden in daily rhythm, in the stilting position of being locked inside one’s slowing consciousness, begin to lurch — like obscure buildings under a coastline, rising up as the breadth of water becomes shallow, drying, an exposition by removal, by what remains among and underneath.

Therein again subdivided in the reverse direction — of the self-regulating his or her self via postures and over-aimed insides — there is the ongoing customization of our sleep apparatuses. There are bedclothes (pillows, blankets, comforters, sheets, each of intensely varying grade); there are nightclothes (pajamas, lingerie, eyewear, headware, gloves, goggles, and socks); there are countless under-teeming extras one might bring in to further modify the sleep space (scents, colors, panels, electronics, sound). Beds that might have once been made from earth or leaves or straw by now have turned to intuitively and scientifically fine-tuned machines, so selective — from brand to size to shape to make (air, water, or spring: What kind of spring? How many? ) to thickness to firmness to surface (and interior) texture — to flipless mattresses, to stain resistance, to what’s the best bang for your buck, to pillowtop or no, to “Choose from memory foam, egg crates or natural latex foam toppers,” to “Healthy, all-organic quilted cases! Non-toxic & Handmade in Seattle”—to even further in-the-minute customization, where through use of electronics one can at any minute further tamper with one’s lying place to make it more conductive for best rest, therein forgoing that often not needing to choose is the most restful state. Can even not our beds make their own decisions? Could there be a bed that takes me wholly by the skin? There are so many possible combinations and adjustments to the becoming process, and the interim between finding one and falling in, that many nights can quickly swim into some limbo of bad alignment, flipping from one set of poses to another, stupid kabuki, burning a whole night by, unto light, before finally, in some defeated haze, the body gives in, unto dawning.

Or not at all. Even once we’ve done the work of getting ready in mind and body and shape and sound and space to do our best to move toward the sleeping door, the world still goes on around us. The unlit room is still the room, and beyond the room is all of elsewhere, other bodies, in their way. And so, just as you’ve begun to find your way to fall into the nothing, perhaps, the phone rings, or someone’s knocking at your door, or the person in bed with you gets back up or begins talking or turns on light, or you are itching, or you remember something unavoidable you have to do before sleep (you forgot to brush your teeth, you have this e-mail, you have a due date, you don’t want to forget to take this certain book with you the next day). All around the perimeter of this process is the potentiality of other-incursion, disrupting, resetting, turning in. Even if most nights nothing happens, there is the continual field of potential at all times around one’s head, and the more one thinks of what could happen, what might happen, what we didn’t do, the worse the context gets. For every definitive thing that has happened, that you can lash yourself to, there is a continuity of other-else. Ramifications. The unexpected. The on and on. This is in some ways reflective of the endless proliferation of attention-hoarding objects made manifest daily, spooling physically and as ideas in and around and outside the house. The more you think the more you’re thinking, and the more there is to think about.

This act of “sleep catastrophizing” is ten times as commonly reported as other disruption stimuli, centered in our tendency to dwell on the worst possible outcomes of a given situation.11 The self around the brain — a larger meat sleeve, wearing being — knows the brain knows more than one could fit in any minute or hold full in one frame. And so the frame shakes. And the self shakes. And in the self, so shakes the blood, the mood, the night, disturbing, in the system, further waking, further wanting, if for the smallest things, the days of junk, reinforced on both sides — inside the mind and in the flesh — an endless and constant shifting phasing phrase of how one might sit inside one’s body, inside one’s air, inside the inside… It is this act of minor replication, the rolling thinking, which in bulk gives want its weight: layers upon layers, cells rubbing against cells, recursed. Many of the most common, overarching sleep catastrophizers concern sleep itself: “I will feel bad the following morning”; “The backlog at work will build because I cannot concentrate”; “I won’t be nice company”; “I will have low self-esteem”; “My boss will shout at me”; and so on.

As the chain of days deepens in this thinking, its resonance upon cognition tends to increase, digging a thicker hole.12 Some nights the self seems to flood so thick it might never turn off — no clear center, overflowed — a sudden nod turning to surging — small juts of adrenaline, like a grenade of sun against the chest upon the cusp of X-ing out, eyes spinning in the black meat of the head— I am not asleep now. I am not asleep now. — looking somewhere heavy in there for some traction, a truer blank inside the blank. In the same way as an evening in the grip seems subject to a periodicity of night, so too do these patterns propel themselves over spans of several days, packages of ruin followed by, at last, perhaps, a recovery evening, in whole crash. And even further out, over weeks or months or years, or into packs of years, in decades, the condition might unfurl, become quiet, massive at once, sudden, returning in the wake of its seeming disregard, a flooding flood of flux and flux of flux, unto any inch of self becoming questioned, blurry, some faceless lock without a key.

The Uncontrollable Reflection

It might begin in any way. In fighting its own exit, on the pillow, my brain at night will cling to anything it can corral — however dumb or old or overreaching. The idle thought initiates itself. The feeling of the thought sometimes seems to spin or worm inside my forehead, or I might roll mnemonically inside it, as in a terrifying drunk. Then the first thought begets the second, following its sound. Usually the thought is not of something massive — the bigger worries of the day already so embedded they are as if part of the air — but instead the mind often comes to take hold of the smallest bolt or jut of time — then the thought births the next thought.13 I might think, for instance, of what happened hours before the want for bed came, again online, sitting with my machine killing hours clicking in endless queue of electronic day — how I ended up again in Facebook’s14 black hole — jumbling through nothing, staring at images of head after new head, until maybe I landed on a particular friend’s profile, someone who I’ve mostly only ever known online, and who as a result I know differently than friends as bodies — their words, their wants or ideas, each day in silence fed15—and here inside the night inside the hour I leave a comment there about them on their electronic wall, words passed herein by pressing buttons into a board I used all day to press letters into other names in other ways, perhaps a random observation spent in passing or maybe a congratulations or inside joke, text for nothing but transition, these are the words that came into my head today when I thought of you ,16 another small memory totem of the era, soon to be pushed down in tally as others also comment, the sentiment to be blinked on for some small moment perhaps and then sent archived into the never-ending electronic mush,17 another hiccup in the night. This inane quasi-interaction, the likes of which occur for many at least several dozen times a day, in e-mail and in clicking, should have ended just at that — though now hereafter, in my own space, I find the thought returning in my head, the presence of the pressing somehow still there in me in stupid residue clogging portals in the place where I would like to be now entering a sleep — it occurs as if from out of nowhere, certainly not chosen18—and now suddenly this small amusement has somehow become the one that will not leave me be, the offhand phrase remaining haunting in my head without my trying, not jolted but simply in there , reoccurred now because I know that it exists — and now in wanting such a thought gone the thinking of the thought brings it back again further solidified, spreading out in strobe upon my attention for some reason beyond the at least several billion other instants like it, at least, among all the other days — and from there on, my frame, roiling out into further mental furies in abstraction, the thought begetting thought again because it can, replacing whatever calm or wear I’d felt before bedtime again in me turning on, filled up with something other than the nowhere that I want — and so now inside a thought inside the thought I might imagine this manifested person — who, again, I hardly know beyond some abstract premonition based on their profile and whatever else they’ve flung into the void — I’ll see them in my head sitting there somewhere before the computer just like I do but here rendered in my head in their own home,19 a version of it somewhat based on where I live, I imagine, though skewed into how those ideas of who they are might make them reflect in the surfaces by which they are surrounded — I will see them seeing the comment I have left in my own typing between us through the wires20—I will see them in their own body, in their chair, sometime between the time of when I posted it and in the minute of my imagining, an event which might not have even happened, they might not see their machine again for days, might not even give a shit to look at Facebook for some long time, and yet there inside me, there they are — I will see them sitting in the glowlight of the machine seeing whatever words I’ve made, however stupid, that small nothing, taking the symbols of the words once used to form other words into their eyes, their brain taking those words in and translating to their own brain, all words mutating both in how they’re read and over time21—I will imagine that person in his or her house with whoever they live with maybe drinking water, as had I, the computer light also against their skin shifting as they click over from the page that brought that comment to another, any one of however many million websites they could choose to, white to blue inside that one silent and sharing glow, or in conflict with other lights inside their house and other voices,22 all the other light around the house, and already this whole thought is stupid, I begin thinking, realizing I’ve been in this hole of thought for several minutes23 here at least, and why am I thinking of this above all things, why in the mass of squirm that sits in anything will I find myself centered on someone inside of a machine, where is the silence that fills other people, and why won’t I at least stop here having recognized I’m thinking on into such dumb, to give up and enter sleep now in a clean mode, shut off the thought from spreading any further in this manner, smearing even this simplest of actions,24 though then just as quickly I am again thinking perhaps again about that person, perhaps how inside their own home or air they spent their day,25 what they did today while I did what I did with mine here, out where I am,26 two twin systems in a system of systems, spinning on, and all those other lives in bodies going on beside them also, or what their life is like on any day at all, days that both begin and end so fast and are so slow, though often in finding I can’t imagine them beyond the machine or in my own patterns I realize I have no idea what rooms there are beyond this room, and who are these people really and how did I come to bounce about them anytime at all, who am I even talking about really, what is this picture, how could this be going on and on27—and yet, inside the image of the body of them in this spinning I will still wonder if I imagine the person of the image of the person today or any day is happy28—happiness or sadness being one room off the human almost anyone could understand — are they happy right this minute or in a broad sense, why or why not, what if they are not happy at all, happy with their life here, their life of which I have so small of an idea, what would make them happy, what could I do, me, what could someone other than me do, could this supposed person who I’ve mostly only ever known in pictures and small typing ever be the kind of person that could kill his or her self29—how would that feel — how would they do it, how would it feel inside their heads, how would it affect me — why am I wondering if this person is going to kill his or her self, this body I hardly know anything about them anywhere at all, what do I know about them, or any person, I imagine, what do I know about my mom, what do I know about who I was last year or ten years back or who I am right now, what happened to all those people I used to see daily at school or in other rooms, what happened to anybody, who is alive, what if this person who I’ve hardly or not at all met did something awful, what if tonight or right now, and then there inside my mind I might see this person shifted, in my image30 of them, hair and teeth and cheeks and eyes, I might see him or her here place a gun inside his or her mouth, he or she standing in a bright light in their white tiled bathroom that looks so much like mine, a room that does not exist at all in shape or form, but instead is a potential room,31 one that could appear in any house in any evening more or less, a room with one long mirror and a door, yes that’s how it fits there, I’ll see this person’s versions of his or her eyes both in their head and in the mirror go huge seeing themselves with the gun aimed, I’ll hear a click and then a boom, the sound inside my head enough some ways perhaps to shake me, reflected in my flesh like something crawls — then in the image of the false room I’ll see the quick blood32 come out the backside of his or her skull hair33 shooting from his or her body in a plume, the body dropping to the tile in silence, slo-mo — because my head can, like a movie, disrupt time — more blood washing thick along the tile of the false bathroom and the mirror and maybe sloshing up to cover at the lens of how I see, and the room around me in my own house might be far gone enough at this point that I will forget that I am there completely, but still in my body, like entering a room that is not sleeping,34 sleeeeeepppppiiinnnnnggggggg , but made of gel, the word sleep 35 itself alone inside me shaking with a terror and slow-erupting, my need, my murderer, my maze,36 and here I am again in here again drifting off into a state I’ve shaped so many times, very much equal to wide awake but underwater or with different colors in my teeth,37 where in the wash of blood my brain will be there then suddenly thinking of the suicided singer38 of a band I loved as an obese teen39 and how that guy then was four years younger than I am now inside my current mind today right now as I am thinking, if getting older — and how inside his body then when I was sixteen and he was twenty-seven he was so famous, and how his name and shape have mutated even still since then,40 since the long passed afternoons playing his music in my bedroom41 or in friends’ houses, different lights, days when we would sit inside for hours against older machines42 or in games barfed cleanly from our heads as mental mechanisms that would never be played again, crammed in among all the other music, days of afternoons that seemed to last six times as long as afternoons do now, in someone’s backyard where we would cut open Wiffle ball bats and fill them full of Super Bounce balls,43 covering the bats themselves in electrical tape to make them heavy so we could beat the balls far into the sky, and in our heads still there, the music, those words still there, the recording of the voice, the looming image of the poster of that to-be-dead man in my bedroom those years that would watch me sleeping flattened 2-D on the wall, surrounded in replication with all the other cut-out images of people I could hold inside my head sometimes and would never meet though one could want to, one could imagine in the skull,44 and all the other days inside that white room passing, the days watched by the eyes, the people who came into the room and were beside me, nearing, the day in that room a friend I hardly knew watched me in the mirror brushing my teeth45 and the gumblood was running in my mouth as I made pressure and she asked me if it was always like that when I brushed my teeth and I said often, yes, that the blood would pour a lot, yeah, some days, from my soft system and would pool inside my mouth, the taste of the blood there in my teeth and giving color, and her posture and her eyes seeing me see, and that’s all I remember of that day then as one might say it and why would that ever be anything to me, why in all the hours of then would these ones be the words or actions I held in me over all,46 my brain now spinning so hard in my head I don’t even feel it, and am nowhere here now closer to being gone, if anything I am more alive inside this second than any other I have walked through in this day, and still it does not stop, and still the thinking chain runs like a wire from the door unto the doors, how in the same year as the blood poured and the girl saw I acted at school in a play,47 and now as the instant of the thought around the play hits I cannot stop thinking of the play, and the way the warm light came down from the ceiling on the curtains and white tile, how it felt to stand near the stage’s edge lip and look into a shade of forms I could not fully see, surrounded, eyes veiled and watching behind the bright, how that year backstage the girls would take their tops off and walk around in bras inside small rooms while changing clothes, false hair and costumes and thick makeup, and how I never kissed any of those girls then, felt no sound inside their mouth, though maybe I could have if I’d tried, being a shy one, afraid for so long to bring my head near to another head and breathe, and how many girls I could have kissed or touched those years and did not,48 and what I would be like if I had, what kind of life, and where those girls are now and if they have learned to love someone and if they are happy with what has ever happened, and if they ever think of me too, how pathetic, and what of all those others from then somewhere, nowhere, sound, maybe those people I had known once and now have found again inside my head are also icons inside the machine, maybe somewhere they are there, and should I get up and try to look while I remember and here I am again fully awake, and here I am again at once inside my body and my eyes are open and I’m red, why am I thinking about this, of all things, at this hour, please Blake, please shut the motherfucking shit of yourself up,49 you time-wasting sack of dogshit, you empty ape of god’s dick, time is screaming, life is over, unending night is coming on so hard and in no sound, how am I ever more awake now and more manic than I had been at any point in the whole long disappearing day,50 look at the clock dickface it’s almost three now, which means in order to feel rested I will sleep until at least ten, which means I won’t be up, showered, and at my desk until at least ten forty give or take some, that’s assuming pleasant traffic and nothing else new in your way, ten fucking forty, dude, that’s almost lunchtime, by then so many already have gotten so much done, getting started by then it would be as if the day had already begun before me and gone on and how quickly the day again would have to end, by then it might as well be time for dinner, might as well be midnight, might as well be time again for bed the way these days go, in such transmission and blinking unless they feel fucked and then they seem to be so long,51 and all of this about the time for this beginning with this much rest under my belt by then is all assuming that I start counting sleep time from this exact minute, this seeing the time it measured in this blinking, which is changing again right now again,52 and so really I’m even further behind than I was just then in passing unless somehow right now I can magically nod out, as if somehow the whole unending trend of my sleep patterns in my life might magically be altered in reverse, and so, realistically, since I’m keeping tally, which why the fuck am I doing that, I have to at least assume it will take another thirty minutes rolling, heaving, waiting, before I conk out somehow, that’s if I get started falling asleep immediately, right now,53 and so I must end this thought now, and hear no more thoughts, and be this time truly silent, of the blank, though in the mind inside my mind54 I know no matter what or how simple from here forward there’s no way to not already be behind tomorrow based on the way I’ve spent my time today, specifically the way I spent my time here lying in a bed where anybody else would already be sleeping, everybody, it seems everybody else in every room surrounding me for miles is nowhere, dreaming, in a whorl, the whole world in fact seems asleep and pleased in silence besides me here, except I guess in countries where most people are awake,55 though at least those other awake people are probably being productive, at least moving, and not just lying here caught in a curl of waking nothing, aching brain, and anyway I have not been to most any of those countries, or seen much of those people, and all those other people in their lives, or what they want inside their lives tomorrow, who they were once, what they’re eating, loving, having, everything they’ve ever done to someone else or done at all wrong, and I really have to stop thinking about this shit now or I’m really going to crush it, I have to stop thinking about thinking about this shit56 of life of absolutely everything but nothing and just really just dissolve myself, go on, and though I know I know there’s clearly no way to do it but just to do it like I’ve done on calmer, cleaner nights in certain ways and so on, and so okay, for real this time, let’s have this, let’s get this done, let’s go…