On the train to Edinburgh the other day, I was reading Nabokov’s autobiography, Speak, Memory. His description of his troubles falling asleep really grabbed my interest:
“All my life I have been a poor go-to-sleeper… Sleep is the most moronic fraternity in the world. It is a mental torture I find debasing… I simply cannot get used to the nightly betrayal of reason, humanity, genius. I loathe Somnus, that black-masked headsman binding me to the block… I had nothing — except one token light…Its vertical line of lambency (which a child’s tears could transform into dazzling rays of compassion) was something I could cling to, since in absolute darkness my head would swim and my mind would melt in a travesty of the death struggle.”
I have never been a good sleeper. There are also a lot of bits about butterflies.