Snooze 2012

3/27/2012

Where did I go after I hit snooze this morning? I don’t think I’m really supposed to be telling you all of this, but I feel I owe it to you. I ate the time. I’m sorry. I went to reach for the readings, but instead I hit the snooze button. Hours that I had dedicated to reading, went to sleep. Certainly I remember that I was supposed to meet with you to discuss Lermontov and Novalis and Murakami, but I couldn’t be bothered to wake. I guess you could say I was busy chasing transience. I took my waking slow. The writers would understand me. Maybe you understand me. But I feel that these rambles could never quite be understood correctly unless you were there with me, in my snooze. 

At 9:05 a.m. the chime goes off on my phone. I set the time that way because it seems more natural to wake up at five past, instead of on the hour. I reach over with pins and needles, and my finger taps the snooze button on the screen. Just five more minutes of rest is all I need, and then I will finish my readings so we can properly have our talk. I am only 70 pages away from the end and would have no trouble completing that in the two hour window before our discussion. But then I hit snooze again. You’re face enters my thoughts, and I can see that look of disappointment where you can tell that I am bullshitting you. I haven’t gotten to the end, and all I’m saying is projected conjecture. I shrink into a ball and my consciousness fades.

At 9:15 a.m. the second set of chimes goes off. I set these knowing I might sleep through the first. There’s an image that keeps recurring in my dreams. It is the Kanizsa triangle. It was proposed by an Italian psychologist to describe the law of closure. That objects grouped together are viewed as a whole. We have a tendency to ignore gaps. There are no closed forms, but our minds create them. Maybe there is no ending to A Hero of Our Time, or Hymns to the Night, or Hardboiled Wonderlandand the End of the Universe, but maybe my mind will just fill them in for the sake of our discussion. 

At 12:59 p.m. I wonder where I’ve been and what I have been doing. But surely I must have been here in this bed the whole time, ignoring my alarms.