Bed

Who invented the bed?

What genius? What incredible insight! What ability!

What simple technology and how little it’s changed.

Why?

Why did we go without it for so long?

What happened to that world?

We go from sleeping on the ground, using rocks as pillows, or other people in the family, or tribe or clan, or pod, whatever it was called, to these devices that change… everything.

What is life without a good night’s sleep?

Life is empty. It is bereft. It’s a dream.

Life is sleepwalking. It’s some sort of pre- or post- or current hallucinatory experience where you shift through time and space, only it doesn’t feel like linear time, and space, it almost feels like popping through wormholes, as if you’re some Star Trek vessel trying to get to another quadrant and the people that you see on the street, they are aliens. They are not human beings that you recognize. Perhaps they’re intelligent, sentient, but more often than not, they’re not. They’re just like you. Vacant. Glassy-eyed.

Why didn’t they sleep?

Do they not have this great invention called the bed? Do they not have access to a whole other world where their subconsciousness takes over? Where they have the opportunity to experience things beyond their own limited nature?

Do they not fly?

Do they not get an opportunity to sit in on Letterman and make him laugh? In fact, you’re so witty that you yourself laugh, and you awaken yourself laughing? And you think, my God, that was the best fucking dream I’ve ever had. Not only was Letterman laughing, but I laughing was too.

Who laughs at their own jokes?

Apparently people who sleep do.

So the bed originated, of what? Straw? And then it shifted to what? Cotton? Then springs? Today, beds are made of cotton and springs and this glorious invention called memory foam. A substance so heavy and so lacking in structural integrity that it’s impossible to move up or down a floor on your own? And the box spring, neither a box, nor a spring.

Today we have the most technologically advanced beds, the zenith of our technological know how, and we live a lifestyle wherein we ignore them, in favour of screens, where we can make sure that our bosses know that we love our jobs more than anyone else, so that we don’t get laid off, so that we continue to feed the children who want new screens so they can stay up at night looking at them, so one day they too can be incredibly productive.

Spurious.

What does spurious mean?

I want to sleep.

I miss sleep.

I thought sleep would be my life-partner, as she will be my death partner, but sleep doesn’t want anything to do with me these days. Maybe she’s found someone else. Someone who respects her more. Someone who’s funnier on Letterman.

Does he sleep?

I wonder about people who can survive on 5 hours of sleep a night or less. These so-called geniuses who do 3 hours and move on, full of energy, vim and vigour. I have a son like that.

I don’t know where he came from.

He has a nice mattress.

He can scream.

That kid can scream.

Sometimes we’re so exhausted that he has to scream for a little while before we wake up. Now I don’t want you calling Child Protective Services and having him taken away from us, so I’m not going to tell you how long he screams for. Now, I’ve already said too much.

5 minutes.

Maximum.

Bed.

Apparently, the Scottish call it a kip. Why is it only 3 letters? Bed and Kip.

The Japanese call it a futon.

We call torture devices futons. Wood slats and cotton, wrapped in polyester.

Better living through technology, I say.

We have an opportunity to make the world better. So let us, by not sleeping.

It’s almost like a drug – like a bad high.

A trip.

Where do you go in your dreams?

Do you visit places?

Do you go on a trip?

Do you dream of missing that big exam? Do you wake up in a panic and realize that was 30 years ago?

Do you dream of that person you flirted with and turned down because you were in a so-called committed relationship and finally get what you really wanted?

Do you enjoy that cigarette?

That last cigarette?

The one you denied yourself yesterday and the day before and the day before that and the year before that?

Do you speak to your father again?

On a park bench? Laugh at his jokes and make him laugh?

Do you see your own end?

Is it a car crash?

Maybe a cliff?

I had a dream when I was a kid. I still remember it. It was the big bad wolf, but it wasn’t the big bad wolf, it was some other monstrosity, and he chased me up a mountain, a very hyperbolic mountain, and the pinnacle was long and slender and we kept going up and up and up and just when he almost got me I fell and I fell and I awoke and I was terrified.

I knew it was a dream.

It scared the shit out of me.

The three little pigs didn’t typically scare me.

I spent a year in high school trying to master lucid dreaming. I got pretty good. That skill is gone now. Now, I don’t even dream, I just collapse, and the alarm goes off, and it doesn’t feel like any time has passed. Sometimes no time has because he’s screaming. But sometimes, the sun is not up. It’s bitterly cold, and I know I’ve got get up, shower, dress and go.

Who invented coffee?