Winter Issue 8
Letters From An Insomniac II
On Bandages For Wounds Unseen
By Andrew Wilson
All things are wearisome;
Man is not able to tell it.
The eye is not satisfied with seeing,
Nor is the ear filled with hearing.
Ecclesiastes 1:8 (NASB)
Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended
“Reluctance” by Robert Frost
What follows is a series of letters that I wrote recently about suffering from chronic insomnia while reflecting on the season of Lent. My intention is to speak quite honestly about hopelessness and hope in equal measure, and on being without regular sleep for an absurdly long time. This year I am attempting to take Lent quite seriously. In a variety of ways, I see the last eighteen months as an extended period of Lent.
Desperation is easy when sleep eludes you for months on end. During Lent I have devoted myself to extended meditations on Ecclesiastes. It is and continues to be my favourite book of the Bible. I strongly believe that Ecclesiastes reminds us that all that is alluring to us in the world—health and wealth and happiness—will not endure. In humanity's all-consuming journey to attain these things, there is much toil, hardship and suffering. Even if we attain these, they will eventually pass away. In the New American Standard Bible, Ecclesiastes begins with a subject heading: The Futility of All Endeavor. If I were to write a book regarding sleep hygiene and cures for insomnia, I may consider adopting that title. I sometimes wish that the Et Cetera was equipped with an appendix. If it was, I would fill it with suggestions that well-wishers, friends, acquaintances, and family members have given me. I have tried home remedies and foreign remedies. I have travelled to doctors, psychologists, counsellors, therapists and specialists. Some of these remedies boasted the title of ‘silver bullet.’ We use the term ‘silver bullet’ to refer to an action that cuts through complexity and provides an immediate solution to a problem. The allusion is to a miraculous fix, otherwise portrayed as ‘waving a magic wand.’ This term derives from the use of actual silver bullets and the widespread folk belief that they were the only way of killing werewolves or other supernatural beings. I sometimes think of my chronic insomnia as a ghost, a spectre that looms every night. Time and time again, the spectre has dodged my silver bullets. When silver bullets failed, I tried gold bullets: remedies that were much more costly, but the spectre dodged those too. When those failed I tried copper bullets: common remedies that were safe to use but had a low chance of working. These bullets were fired into what seemed like thin air. They worked perhaps for an hour or two and then the effects evaporated. Still, the spectre loomed.
I have grown weary of these so-called cures. I do not begrudge anyone for suggesting them. I appreciate these attempts at helping me to escape my affliction. Yet my ears and eyes are not full of potential cures for insomnia. Some sleepless nights are spent researching articles, journals, studies, and the occasional silver bullet. I have run through the fields and woods, through forests that made empty promises to me. I have not found a cure for my insomnia. I am looking to bandage something that has gone afoul inside. I often ask myself if my affliction is spiritual or physical. If the affliction is physical, then my solution might be found by a doctor. If the affliction is spiritual, I may find the solution in my church community. I would be ecstatic if I returned home one night and could say of insomnia: “lo, it is ended.”
Insomnia can present itself with some physical characteristics, bags and redness under the eyes. A slow gait. Weight loss or weight gain. Involuntary twitches or spasms. However, you would not be able to spot insomnia from afar in the same way that you would be able to spot a broken arm or leg. Those afflictions have bandages on the outside. I am searching high and low, near and far for a bandage for a wound unseen. Ecclesiastes and the season of Lent have helped me to realize this:
The bandages come undone. They always will.
And in the face of that impermanence, I am reminded of the truth of Psalm 136: His lovingkindness is everlasting. When silver bullets lose their lustre, His lovingkindness is everlasting. When sleeping pills lose their effectiveness from continued use, His lovingkindness is everlasting. When my bed appears to me as a hostile environment, His lovingkindness is everlasting. When confusion due to sleep deprivation is a constant companion, His lovingkindness is everlasting. Give thanks to the God of Heaven, His lovingkindness is everlasting.
The Arimathean
By David Montgomery
“Now there was a man named Joseph, from the Jewish town of Arimathea.... who had not consented to their decision....and was waiting for the kingdom of God”.
Waiting
for the kingdom of God:
not nailed-down verdicts,
or trumped-up charges;
nor Law and Justice
bent.
He did not consent.
Waiting
for his moment to stand;
to nail his colours,
to take his side.
The final curtain -
the end -
turned skeptic friend.
Waiting
for permission to go
and remove the nails,
and dress the wounds,
and give his last gift.
A tomb -
or a waiting room ?
Hostage
By Jerusha Lieow
Fear has kept me to the ground
Weary, dreary, sorry, bound
Lo, forgot that I was found
Known, owned, by Love profound
Be hostage no more
Choose boldly to soar
Christ paid too great a price to ignore
Fear, hold me hostage no more
The Discovery of Ice
One Hundred Years of Solitude
By Steven Gomez
Sometimes it’s quite difficult to review a book after a single reading when the book is clearly a masterwork of literature that does multiple things at once. Even more difficult is when everyone already knows it’s a masterwork of literature and has written endlessly about it since its original publication. Unless you’re going to denounce it as trash, it’s hard to say anything new or noteworthy. This became my happy problem when I finally took the opportunity to introduce myself to Gabriel García Márquez and magical realism through the classic novel One Hundred Years of Solitude—and promptly fell in love.
There’s no one story in One Hundred Years of Solitude. Or perhaps there’s only the same story over and over again, with variations on a theme. It will take some re-reading and pondering over this narrative, the saga of the Buendía family set in the fictional town of Macondo, to find which description is true.
I realized at some point that the novel’s major themes, motifs, and literary technique are all perfectly summed up in the famous opening sentence: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”
Immediately we are introduced to a key member of the family at a turning point in his life; but by the time the sentence is finished we’ve gone back to his early childhood and the focus shifts to his father. Temporal dislocation is a key tool in García Márquez’ literary toolkit. Throughout the book he surprises you with a casual mention of someone’s future death, then takes perhaps another fifty pages before it comes into the story’s present.
And then a man standing in front of a firing squad is fundamentally a man standing alone. The great tragedy that dogs the generations of the Buendía family is summed up in the word solitude. It takes many different forms, and happens for different reasons, but the Buendías are ultimately solitary people. They live in a kind of confinement, and even find ways to make their desires for love with another into an isolation from the world. They withdraw into their obsession and many do not find the happiness they once sought, and end their lives in solitude. But then again, it is connecting to the outside world that eventually leads to Macondo’s corruption and downfall. So which is better: solitude or connection? Perhaps its a question the novel seeks only to ask rather than answer.
Then there’s the ice. This brings us to the most celebrated aspect of García Márquez’ style and work, something we’ve dubbed as magical realism. He describes the fabulous and the mundane with the same serious tone, and the effect is not so much to bring the fantastic down to earth as to transform the ordinary into the miraculous, and at the same time transforms how we see ourselves and our world.
A little more than halfway through the book, Úrsula, the family matriarch, begins to go blind. She’s able to disguise the fact from the rest of the family by being intimately familiar with their habits and her other senses. But it also opens her perceptions about the natural world (discovering that the sun’s path shifts imperceptibly throughout the year) and, surprisingly, “in the impenetrable solitude of decrepitude she had such clairvoyance as she examined the most insignificant happenings in the family that for the first time she saw clearly the truths that her busy life in former times had prevented her from seeing.”
Úrsula’s solitude comes from her changing condition, but it also turns into a kind of blessing; she does not lose her eyesight so much as she gains eyes to see what is true. Aureliano’s father took him to “discover” ice. What about ice needs discovering? In a South American town like Macondo, ice no doubt seems strange and miraculous. But more than that, García Márquez makes us feel the strangeness and the wonder when they touch the cold, wet surface and suddenly their world includes something new.
One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of those works that embody why we write literature: imagination expands our horizons and reveals the truth of the world in all its beauty and pain, and of the myriad ways in which we both love and hurt one another, the ways we are both communal and solitary, perhaps even at the same time. Imagination changes what we see and how we see it, increasing our empathy and our wonder at life–and hopefully cutting through the walls of the prison cells that hold us in solitude.