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On the Invisibility of Sleep

Helen Walpole July 07

In the June edition of Meanjin, Helen Walpole explores the peaks and troughs of sleep – its science, its symptoms and, most of all, its strange absence from our stories and language. Why is sleep so integral yet so underwritten, and what can learn from its patterns? A brief extract is below, and you can read the full essay on our editions page.



Through its very neutrality sleep is overlooked, despite its daily presence. It is so habitual, so frequent, so routine, that we cease to notice it. We may enquire in the morning, ‘How did you sleep?’ but following the acceptable response, ‘Well, thanks,’ we tend not to follow this line of questioning further. Discussions of dreams, sleep phenomena, disturbed or absent sleep, however, are more commonly pursued. We do not seek to discuss normal sleep, to unpick its qualities or its substance, nor to meditate upon its pleasurable nature. Yet how delightful is a good night’s sleep! How buoyant, how translucent, how crisp! It is hand-blown glass, a jellyfish, a wet window, an exhaled breath.

There is, however, a strong ambivalence here. While we value sleep and dread the lack of it, we relegate it to the fringes of our (Western) social structure. Sleep is conducted in private, nesting the sleeping body and protecting it in its period of such vulnerability. Submerged for much of the night in stages 2 to 4 of sleep, with our attention turned away from external stimuli, our body is left without the protection of its vigilant watcher. Like animals, we have always sought a safe place for sleep, whether in a cave, a shelter or simply by the fireside. This need for protection forms the fundamental role of the dwelling. Homes provide a space to sleep—all other activities can be (and prehistorically were) done in the public sphere. By crude definition, homelessness is at its root the lack of a place to sleep privately. Western cultural mores require us to hide ourselves away to sleep, and then enforce this through designing our public spaces to repel the sleeper. Bus stops take the form of angled seats, park benches are fitted with a central armrest—like two armchairs pushed together—to deter anyone but a contortionist from lying down. Sleeping is tolerated in certain sanctioned spaces (such as in waiting rooms, libraries or on public transport) but is otherwise strongly discouraged. Sleep is wilfully overlooked. We close our eyes to it, push it into private space and avoid discussing it. We will its invisibility.

And sleep is invisible because we do it in the dark. We are part of the animal kingdom, and by our own biology we are slaves to our circadian cycle. Though we may bend with the passing current of culture that flows in the direction of a 24-hour society, we follow the dictates of our 24-hour body clock. Night-time is for sleeping. During the dark hours, when most of us are in our beds, those industries that continue to operate at night are subject to strict controls. Night freight travels along city bypasses; use of air brakes is forbidden in built-up areas. The sirens of emergency vehicles are silenced. Trains run express. Even busy international airports are placed under curfew. Local councils ban noise in neighbourhoods and on building sites. Society legislates to protect sleep at night, and in doing so keeps it invisible and private. With dawn comes life—the shared life of a society that has spent the past eight hours trying to get some rest.


 

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