Insomnia

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Marina Benjamin. Insomnia

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About Insomnia

Insomnia is on the rise. Villainous and unforgiving, it’s the enemy of energy and focus, the thief of our repose. But can insomnia be an ally, too, a validator of the present moment, of edginess and creativity? Marina Benjamin takes on her personal experience of the condition—her struggles with it, her insomniac highs, and her dawning awareness that states of sleeplessness grant us valuable insights into the workings of our unconscious minds. Although insomnia is rarely entirely welcome, Benjamin treats it less as an affliction than as an encounter she engages with and plumbs. She adds new dimensions to both our understanding of sleep (and going without it) and of night, and how we perceive darkness.

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It occurred to me only later that perhaps an additional question ought to be posed—one more pressing than why the book never arrived. The question is this: What if waking life is incapable of adequately attuning us to the needs of our unconscious minds?

Lately I have been experimenting with earplugs to shut up the birds, but beyond the hush they create—the welcome muting of the carnival noise beyond my window—earplugs open up a strange inner world of mysterious echoes and thickening silences. If I listen hard along this internal register I can tune into the dull thud of my heart treadmilling in its cage and sometimes I pick up the coarse whooshing sound of vital fluids sloshing, or wind spiraling through the ammonite tubes of my inner ear. Who knows (and who cares) whether this is just a trick played on us by the senses—an inventive way for the body to fill up the void with something other than nothing. Whatever the cause, it affords us some glimpse into the insomniac’s sensorium.

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