Counting Sheep
I have been suffering from insomnia lately. My mind mind is whirring around energetically,
creating new frocks and fabrics or making extravagant , glorious and impossible
plans for future European parties. If
that was the only result it might be quite a useful insomnia. But after some time I start to go astray, visiting far away places and times which it
would be better to forget...
Since this is a recurring problem I have tried all the traditional remedies, and
none of them suits me. In particular the counting of sheep has me wide awake
and very annoyed within a few minutes. I start counting, but the sheep are
never behaving themselves. There is
always a fat one that can’t jump over the fence and needs rescuing. And while I
go and help to shove the disgusting overweight
specimen over the fence , breaking into a sweat with the effort, I see
out of the corner of my eye lots of agile sheep jumping over the gate
without waiting for me to count them. So I end up in a tiss and in the unhappy knowledge that I have totally failed.
A girlfriend of mine once told me that she counted
passed lovers instead of sheep, it always did the trick for her and she
fell asleep almost immediately. I
assumed that she meant just having them them filing past consequtively rather than making them
jump over fences. Well, I have tried, but yet again, this puts me into a
terrible mood as I start wondering what on earth possessed me... and what could
I possibly have seen in that one... and why, oh, why did he not love me... and why could
I not have loved that one , it would have been perfect really etc , etc...
I lay awake in the warm rainy season night listening to the
toads’ joyous choral practice as a thousand throaty toad voices raise their
celebration to the rains. Around
midnight and a little later I hear, one by one, the motorcycles skirt by the
perimetres of my house, on their way home from their secret midnight meetings with marabouts or lovers. Many
nights I hear the Moezzin’s first call to prayer, drifting across the river
from the Grand Mosque, and some nights I
see the first light dawn over Djenné before sleep finally claims me.
(Picture shows Baobab tree with bee-hives)
posted by toubab at 7:55 PM
7 Comments:
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Oh, boy do I know this one. You, however, have made insomnia into poetry:
I lay awake in the warm rainy season night
listening to the toads’ joyous choral practice
as a thousand throaty toad voices
raise their celebration to the rains.
Around midnight and a little later
I hear, one by one,
the motorcycles skirt by the perimetres of my house,
on their way home from their secret midnight meetings
with marabouts or lovers.
Many nights I hear the Moezzin’s first call to prayer,
drifting across the river from the Grand Mosque, and some nights I see
the first light dawn over Djenné
before sleep finally claims me.
Oh, Susan, you are too kind and I am quite overwhelmed that you should find some poetic merit in what I write...!
LOL. I love this one.
I myself suffer from insomnia.
Instead of sheep I count the seconds and minutes that tick by, and that itself is the problem.
As far as the fat sheep goes, well, even in dreams there's a black sheep.
No pun intended.
Hi Sophie!
The only other blog I read regularly is written by Pamela Timms who is living in Delhi, India and writes mostly about street food.
Thought you might be inspired though as she has finally managed to write her much talked about book based on her blog and it has just been published: http://eatanddust.com/
Kim
Thank you Kim, just looked up the eat and dust blog: yes indeed it is very good! and the name is fab, I think the book should have been called that too!
There was a lot of discussion about the title and Pam invited her readers to vote on the title ... anyway, of course got all excited about reading it but only available in India at the moment! Just looked at the lovely new MaliMali clothing and fabrics - all gorgeous and terrific new photos as well.
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