The Midnight Disease

Michael Chabon’s well-named alias for insomnia. And I’ve got it. For about a month now I haven’t been able to fall asleep before dawn. I’ve watched the sun rise nearly every morning now - or at least I have watched the haze over Hangzhou get lighter by the hours.

Part of the problem, I’m sure, is that I’ve resumed my old addiction of lattes and cappuccinos. One thing I would never recommend is taking up the habit again after four years of java abstinence. Sometimes I slip and forget to order decaf. It’s like coming back to heroin.

The coffee isn’t all to blame, though. I have no discipline when it comes to switching off my brain. I construct emails, I draft poems, and I make lists, all in the dark while my head twitches on the pillow. I do this for a routine hour or two every night before I realize sleep just isn’t going to happen. I give up, turn on the light again and read (or come back to writing).

It is fear that I will miss out on some profound line of poetry coming to me, that I will be laying in my bed with my eyes closed and a poem will slip into my head and, if I don’t get up and write it down immediately, it will slip out again.

In Wyoming, I got into the habit of falling asleep with a pen in my hand and a pad of paper just underneath. If a line or a thought came to mind, I’d simply scribble it down in the dark, sometimes without ever even opening my eyes. In the morning I’d have to transcribe my own downward-slanting chicken scratch onto the computer. This seemed a good method and I might return to it.

Another problem, not surprisingly, is the constant noise and interruptions of the apartment and those girls with whom I live. They leave their cell phones and their organizers and their messenger thingys all out in the living room to beep beep beep all night long.

For four nights in a row this week, I have jumped up to an alarm going off just outside my door. Today I asked them, “Did you hear it?” They answered yes. Why, then, was I the only one to emerge from my room to silence the darn thing? They are not my belongings. I don’t know how to work a Korean internet phone, nor an electronic Korean dictionary/organizer.

I thumbed the small machines in the dark, trying to find off switches. At one point, I considered simply chucking them out of the window, but thought better of it. It is currently 3:30 in the morning and I have already switched off one machine. I wonder how many sounds and bells and whistles I’ll wish to break in the next few hours to come.

Then, invariably, there is always the girls’ morning routine. They rise at 6:00 am and the unremitting noise only ends when they are out the door at 7:45. I hear singing, yelling, screeching, shrieking, and cries of Korean morning clangings.

Peace finally comes at 8:00 am and I am able to sleep until around 11:00. At this point, the housekeeper bangs the laundry poles against my window, hanging up the morning’s washings. So, I rise. I check the weather. Then I walk a mile down the road to Starbucks and have the latte that will keep me awake again.