still I lie sleepless

I'm always hot. It's most annoying when I try to sleep. In that trickster way that the Universe seems to enjoy of pairing couples who run at opposite ends of the hot/cold spectrum, my wife is always cold. The thermostat wars are played out most fiercely in bed, she with her electric blanket on high, me with my fan(s) and brutally cold air, whether from an open window in the winter or an AC set so low it's ecologically criminal in the summer.

To make it even more difficult, I can only sleep really well covered by a heavy blanket - and by heavy, I mean weighty. But then, of course, I burn up.

I look at these thick, plush beds below and I'm torn: oh, don't those look divine, the perfect heft to snug you down to sleep...and, oh my god, don't those look frightfully hot, guaranteed to make falling asleep a miserable impossibility...


My wife, of course, would suffer no such quandary. She would love them unequivocally.  


What do you think?

A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by

One after one; the sound of rain, and bees
Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds and seas,
Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky -
I've thought of all by turns, and still I lie
Sleepless...

~William Wordsworth, "To Sleep"

chief nourisher in life's feast

The guest room in our new house will be the "peedie*" room, no larger than the room of the same distinction in Sylvia Brown's Hostel in Orkney, Scotland. In fact, as soon as I pictured the twin beds in this room, my mind's eye overlaid that scene with one of the room my sister and I shared there in Stromness last summer.

photo mine: Stromness, Orkney, Scotland 

The guest room here is, so far, just two twin beds with bare mattresses. Bed-making and picture-hanging are about all there is left to do - the room's too small for much else, but big enough for sleeping, which is enough, after all.

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Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast.
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth

*Peedie(adjective): an Orcadian (Orkney, Scotland) English word, meaning ‘little’






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a good world to be lost in

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“A great snug wall goes around everything, has always been there, will always

remain. It is a good world to be lost in. It comforts you. It is all right. And you sleep.”

~ William Stafford 

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the grace of the world

My grandmother's house had a sleeping porch, and when I was little it was one of my very favorite places to sleep. She lived in south Arkansas, just 1/2 hour north of the Louisiana border; summers were sweltering, nights filled with sticky breezes and the sound of cicadas. Winters were fairly temperate, but a pile of quilts was still a delicious necessity.

This time of year - my favorite by any measure - makes me want to sleep outside. Nighttime temperatures dip down to almost cold, but the crickets and cicadas are still singing their rowdy lullabies. It's the best of both worlds.

Will our next house have a sleeping porch? I hope so!

photos:1) apartmenttherapy.com, 2) myhomeideas.com, 3) renthawaiihome.com,

4) madeinmississippi.blogspot.com, 5) spicelines.com, 6) countryliving.com,

7) front-porch-ideas-and-more.com, 8) decorpad.com

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry

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