Time in three parts

There’s something inherently metamorphic about time and our perception of it. We all know that time spent enjoying ourselves - Christmas say, or a week’s holiday, or an evening in the company of good friends – seems to be gobbled up and swallowed whole before we’ve had the chance to catch our breath. And yet when we are waiting for news, working when we’d rather be elsewhere, or perhaps feeling dislocated or lonely, our experience is quite the opposite; the minutes and seconds appear almost to peel away from the face of the clock and slough into drifts at our feet. That we know logically and intellectually that all hours are created equal makes absolutely no difference to our experience.

A third kind of time metamorphosis is waiting for those of us who frequently find ourselves awake when most others are sleeping. The hours that make the transition from night through to daytime are quite unlike those that precede or follow. Their flow is simultaneously fast and slow, at once encompassing and isolating, life-affirming and desolate, creative and yet frustratingly bleak. The frequency with which you stalk the corridors of night-time wakefulness will determine your familiarity with and response to this experience.

I’ve long since ceased resenting my insomnia and have come to appreciate that it is part of the bundle of traits and attributes that makes up my character. Not good, not bad, just neutral. In the spirit of all good self-help books, if you stop defining something as a problem then it stops being a problem.

And so it was that my first night back at the barn saw me making tea, reading, surfing the net and generally entertaining myself as those hours passed by. That the dog was similarly afflicted was a surprise and most out of character, him being a creature that tends to snooze most of the time. The clacking of his claws on the stairs and the floorboards made him a very unsubtle no-sleep walker. He also managed to get himself stuck three times – twice in the same room. What’s that about learning from experience...?

I’ve brought his bed over here today and hope that having somewhere to properly settle down tonight will do the trick. As for me, well, time will tell.