Insomnia and The State of Oblivion

It is 2:54 AM and I awake from a sound sleep, listening to...nothing. There is no sound of dark creatures prowling in the night around and under this small cottage. It's odd because for the last year and a half I had grown used to if not particularly happy about the foragers out there in the garden: the mice, the squirrels, the possums and yes, the rats.  Eating, munching, ripping apart, staying alive. The rats ate the most vociferously and shamelessly, destroying the kale, the chard and the budding tomato plants each night, long past midnight and into the early morning hours. 

I'd grown used to the sunrise ritual of rushing out each daybreak to see their destruction, swearing that they'd cost me far too much in time, energy, money and woe is me, hope. Hope that this time I had defeated them when in fact, I hadn't. There over by the air conditioning unit and near the water heater were their rat droppings. Their poop, their dark streaks against the concrete, their invisible rat prints, marking territory, making their nests in the palm tree in the house next door and burrowing underground to the tunnel system, intricate and complex as the intelligence that had created it. Their efforts in the backyard each night to simply survive had, in fact, astounded me to the point of respect. I had not only grown used to them but I had learned to honor their lives. It was the uncomfortable relationship between human and non human energy surviving in a shared space. In some odd way, after months of their nightly visitations, they had brought me comfort and unease in the same breath. They reminded me of all the relationships I have had. Comfort and unease in the same breath.

Now it is 3:09 AM and I am no more on the verge of sleep, (despite sipping my sleepy time Celestial Seasons herbal concoction) than I was at 2:54 AM. I am in fact heartbroken once again over all the failures of the last year. Friendships that went bust. Poor financial investments. Failed expectations of success on some interpersonal planet I have never inhabited and most likely never will. I tell myself each day when the sun comes up that this year will be different, that this year will see the culmination, the personal fulfillment of, the connection to another human being in a way that is filled with passion and joy and the heart-spinning breathtaking moment of the fall into bliss. I have to keep telling myself this or I will die of despair as so many do who have no shelter, no family, no food on the plate, no will any longer to live. I don't want to fall into that but I know I can. I know we all can. Conjure up the right mixture of ingredients and despair is a dish served on porcelain so thin we can see right through it to what lies beneath.

Now the rats have left this yard. The landlord took care of that. He came here one day with a whole team, ripped out my garden, told me I could no longer keep vegetables any where near the house because my garden, my beautiful tenderly cared for garden of healthy green things attracted vermin, is how he put it. The pest control people set traps under the house, poured buckets of water and bleach everywhere to get rid of rat scent and either killed them or drove them away. They are no longer wanted here, this home I had unknowingly created for them in my zeal to create a home for myself. I miss hearing them running, climbing, scratching in the walls and under the house. That unease they caused in me, that sense of connectedness to things that are homeless, hungry, determined, alone...all gone now. And I am left with sleeplessness. I am safe from the rats, the landlord said triumphantly. For now. As long as I don't plant any more green things. 

It's now 3:25 AM.  I take another sip of tea. I listen for even the tiniest scratching somewhere, the breath of something besides me and the dog. There is nothing. My heart breaks on some infinitesimal level to know how easily the intricate pattern of lives can be so unceremoniously swept away with traps and a bucket of water and bleach.