Page 71 - November 2020

November 2020 71
Litterateur

Strategies of Sleeping

The composition of the lines was interesting and overall, it produced a balanced

effect. Jim still needed something he could count. Try as he might, he was unable
to piece the original work he composed back together. In this mental world, Jim
peeled away the surface in hopes of starting anew. All he managed to do was
bring out black and white text that was hiding underneath the scene. The words
formed a series of statements but none of these relaxed him. THIS IS A SHEEP
said one. THIS IS ANOTHER SHEEP said the sentence behind it. IMAGINE
SOMETHING THAT WILL HELP YOU FALL ASLEEP read the text above both of
them. Jim decided to take the advice of the last statement and pictured a single
sheep despite its blurry form. As he focused on it as much as he could, the
sheep’s white body filled in his mind, until the wool seemed to brush against his
skull. Jim pictured a dark part for the head and a yellow part underneath it for the
fence. When he was done, the formerly round sheep now looked like a flag,
except cloudier, with one color layered on top of the other.

Jim decided to stop counting and just take in this form of one sheep crossing
over the fence. It was a form which could be replicated to infinity. He simply
looked at the colors and the way they interacted, the gauze halo of white, the

somber black charcoal, and the yellow at the bottom which suggested a hopeful
future that had to be avoided as if coming from a flame. The sheep was now like
Jack B. Nimble, going over a candlestick as much as a farmer’s fence. Jim
thought about these colors and meditated on their combination for several more
minutes. He returned to imagining himself back on a sea, floating while watching
these lines of color move on the shore. Gradually this body of water could no
longer support him and he felt himself sinking under the surface.

He wanted to struggle against it at first, until he realized this was what he had
tried to do before thinking about the sheep. Jim stopped resisting mentally and
allowed the darkness of rush up around him, leaving the world above to his
formerly waking mind. As long as he merely noticed color, or the lack of it, he was
fine. Eventually, he found the sleep he had been trying to submerge himself into,
and his headache was gone for good too.