Sleeping with places

SpokesTo sleep somewhere, to surrender our unconscious bodies to a strange bed or a spot on the ground while our minds go wandering — how is it that we feel we haven’t really visited a place until we’ve done this? It is not enough merely to have looked, to have listened, to have smelt and touched and tasted, though all these things matter too.

Perhaps we desire intimacy with the land on the same terms we seek it with a lover. I think it’s more than a euphemism to say of a couple that they’re sleeping together. The language recognizes that what’s important is not the endlessly variable act of lovemaking itself, which is a private matter and doesn’t really concern the larger community, but the quality of a relationship, whose power and potential longevity are clearly signalled by this most basic form of communion. At one level, obviously, it’s a demonstration of mutual trust. At another level, it suggests a shared habitation, even if the partners retain separate residences or rarely sleep in the same place twice.

These speculations are necessarily tenuous because the science of sleep is still in its infancy; researchers argue over the most basic questions about why we need to sleep and dream at all. It’s evidently part of our shared heritage with other animals, which, lacking symbolic language, may rely on dreaming to sort and archive their memories. Even in many pre-literate societies, the world of the past and the ancestors is assumed to remain accessible through dreaming, where hints about the world to come can also be gathered. Conceptions of these worlds vary widely from one culture to the next, so generalization is difficult, but in most cases there’s a direct link between time and distance, and the ability of the dreamer to travel very rapidly or instantaneously from one place to another is key to her clairvoyance. Why this link? Because life is envisioned as a journey, a route along a network of paths; to travel back in time is to travel in space as well.

We know from our own experience how memories are tied to the specific matrices in which they were born, and can be triggered by detailed cues such as odors — which even our inferior primate noses can distinguish by the hundreds — or the gestalt of a place. If I want to relive a memory, my first step is to recall in as much detail as possible the place where it occurred. The modern demotion of place to mere setting or environment simply doesn’t jibe with lived experience.

Maybe sleeping in a place adds to our feeling of truly inhabiting it because it symbolizes its inclusion in these worlds of memory and prescience. It solidifies its position in time and space by dissolving the horizon, which we cannot do away with as long as we are awake and our physical bodies and perceptions still impose strict limits. This in turn suggests why sleeping together is so basic to making love: after the relatively fleeting ecstasy of sex itself, sleep offers another, longer-lasting way to dissolve boundaries. And even as the sex (depending on the partners) may create a new person, the shared sleep creates a new place from the intersection of paths.

15 Replies to “Sleeping with places”

  1. Hm! I think I sleep more with sky than earth. Night air promises a getaway from the place where I am. I’m a hitchhiker. I crack a window, throw my nose down like a backpack and stick out my thumb!

  2. ‘Maybe sleeping in a place adds to our feeling of truly inhabiting it because it symbolizes its inclusion in these worlds of memory and prescience.’ A fine proposition, very elegantly presented, Dave.

  3. Hey, thanks — I’m glad y’all connected with this. I wasn’t sure how much sense it would make to anyone but me. I’ve gotten rather out of practice writing this kind of post, which used to be such a staple around here back in ’04 and ’05.

    Bill, I seem to know a lot of people who can’t sleep without an open window even on the coldest nights, including both my parents. Since I don’t share that predilection, I guess I will refrain from attempting to deconstruct it, but thanks as always for the entertaining comment.

  4. Thanks for this, Dave. It further inspires me to make my primary practice, these days, the practice of inhabiting my space deliberately, living in my house instead of camping in it. Very difficult. My pre-eminent concern, anyplace I’ve lived, has been making sure there’s an unblocked escape route to the outside. Not maybe the best way to live.

  5. Great post! Before I make a big comment I will have to sleep on it.

    Just a thought….whenever it snows a lot a night my dreams all have have a soft white background to them.

  6. Dale – That sounds like a worthwhile practice to attempt; good luck. I’m flattered that you found inspiration here.

    Fred – Really? Far out.

  7. Much to think about here. Were I not exhausted from work and a cold and my own fitful sleeping patterns lately, I’d be able to think more clearly about this and the various connections that came and went as I read it. Anyway, very nice post. I’ll have to come back.

  8. I’m sorry I don’t have anything to add other then this : that’s one mighty fine post Dave.

    It opens ones mind in many different directions … sweet.

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