insomnia

A postscript of a letter sent to Groucho Marx from his son claims that while in Paris he has found a new suppository to cure his father’s insomnia. The joke: accidentally stepping on one has made his foot fall asleep. Like father, like son. There’s always comedy in tragedy.

I watch you sleep, My Beauty. I move the chair close for a front row viewing. That’s why there are those four permanent deep indentations in the carpet. In the dim hovering starlight your fragile white orbs steadily rise and fall as you dream, a solitary tear rolling upon your cheek. But it’s too much for a man, not daring to awaken you to describe the delicacy.

So, arising as quiet as possible I descend down into the library where the dog is asleep at the foot of the recliner. Do dogs suffer from sleeplessness ever? No, their lives are too perfect. Except for the tormenting, arrogant, cat across the street. She sighs deeply with one eye opening, lifts and drops her tail once, then drops her head.

I choose Hemingway at 3:30, rereading in direct lamplight a correspondence for Collier’s magazine from 1944 when he was embedded with French Resistance in his beloved Paris. Roads and hills that he once strolled and bicycled in better days, alas coming over the hill in a battered jeep, he blinks with Paris layed out before him like a mural in a waking dream, and cleaning his glasses he gets a lump in his throat.

It’s always a comfort to know Paris is free. I drift, and when I open my eyes again it is dawn.