Sleep

SleepES

#lyricalessay, #object, #subject, #animate, #communication, #codependence

You sit in a subtle state of stillness, without dreaming, as you sleep. You are absorbing the environment around you, watching us from afar as we sit on the sofa, watching an apocalypse movie. You sleep with your eyes open, and with your eyes open, to me, your sleep seems instead an act of waiting. Sleep as suspended death. For you are not dead, like the others may say you are. You are alive and waiting.

When I do not need you I do not regard you as I should. Although I see you from the corner of my eye as I traverse the room, you are merely an ornament to me as you sleep. You are dead, for when we speak of objects we will often describe them as inanimate and lifeless. In their inability to move without our action – their continued silence and incommunicability with us – we rarely perceive them as alive.

But are you ever truly dead? No, to me you are animate. As I sit here writing, I can see you. Your eyes point in two directions and one of them is staring at me. I know you want me to use you. I know you want me to hold you. I know they need water from your beak. You are silent but you are watching me as you sleep. Just like the bird you represent you seem to sleep with half your mind, for a flamingo, whilst sleeping on one leg, will shift its weight to the other without waking; the other half of its brain stays awake so as not to lose balance. In this state of sleep, I feel you are near. You are trying to move me to grab you and use you. To wake you.

Without a voice I can understand, we are left to communicate with each other through touch, and through our actions.

Gibson’s ‘The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception’ (Lawrence Erlbaum: New Jersey), 134, Tilley, Christopher; 2001. “Ethnography and Material Culture, “ in Handbook of Ethnography. P. Atkinson et Al. (eds.). London: Sage Pub. Barthes, Roland. ‘The Neutral’ (Columbia University Press: New York, 2005), 37. These allow us to control each other and this is when we both become alive. I have you by your neck and now I can fill you up from inside out. Water from the tap pours into the hole in your back and will pour out of your face later on. Dust has settled on your skin, as you have been sleeping for a while now. The tulips have died from the frost and lack of water we have provided. The basil looks dramatically sad. losing focus on you and what we are doing. Sleep as the suspended time between uses. Or perhaps you sleep the moment just before and after we activate each other? The moment just between when you are perceived as dead or alive. Sleep as the airlock between your two bodies. Dead and alive. Immortal– close to death– versus anxious living (Barthes 37).

But come on then, we’ll fix the problem. As we proceed with the task at hand, your body’s weight dictates my body’s movement, and we are in motion together. A seamless action; a coordinated dance routine between you and me. You make me a watering vessel. A carer. Without you I would not succeed. Without me you would not either. When our joint action is complete, when you cease to be animate, you fall back into your sleep. Into your death.

But truly you do not fall into nothingness. You are not frozen, although you are dreamless. You are living a utopian sleep. So what happens when we perceive your death as suspended death? As sleep. The sleep in between your interactions with us; my interaction with you. If an object is ‘born’ when it is used for a purpose by us, are you then ‘born’ through our ritual? Or, not born, but rather awoken, by this ritual of watering: Of keeping the plants alive. Then you are awoken through our codependent relationship. You are awoken as the action we create together activates you from your slumber and me from mine. By turning death to sleep, and accepting our codependence, you gain a sense of agency.

But when is your true utopian sleep? Is it precisely in the suspended time when my hand is about to reach you? In the moment’s gap between my fingers and your plastic skin, in the spark we feel, the current running in the air between us, as I am grabbing for your neck? Or is it whilst I am thinking of you? Between my fingers, between my thoughts of you, between