There are five phases of sleep

Saw Cinderella in a party dress
But she was looking for a nightgown

Stage 1

Even the best fall down sometimes
Even the stars refuse to shine
Out of the back you fall in time
… You and I collide

Stage 1 sleep is light sleep. You experience a drifting in and out of sleep. You can be easily woken up. Your eye movement and body movements slow down. You may experience sudden jerky movement of your legs or other muscles. These are known as hypnic myoclonia or myoclonic jerks. These “sleep starts” can give a sensation of falling. They are caused by the motor areas of the brain being spontaneously stimulated.

Stage 2

Now Cinderella don’t you go to sleep
It’s such a bitter form of refuge
Well, don’t you know the kingdom’s under siege
And everybody needs you

Around 50 percent of your time sleeping is spent in stage 2 sleep. During this stage, eye movement stops and your brain waves (a measure of the activity level of the brain) become slower. There will also be brief bursts of rapid brain activity called sleep spindles.

Stage 3

Are you back in my life to stay
Or is it just for today, oh, that you’re gonna need me?

Stage 3 is the first stage of deep sleep. The brain waves are a combination of slow waves, known as delta waves, combined with faster waves. During stage 3 sleep it can be very difficult to wake someone up. If you are woken up during this stage, you may feel groggy and disoriented for several minutes.

Stage 4

And I dreamed your dream for you and now your dream is real
How can you look at me as if I was just another one of your deals?

Stage 4 sleep is the second stage of deep sleep. In this stage the brain is making the slow delta waves almost exclusively. In this stage it is also very difficult to wake someone up. Both stages of deep sleep are important for feeling refreshed in the morning. If these stages are too short, sleep will not feel satisfying.

REM Sleep – Rapid Eye Movement

We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;—

REM sleep is the sleep stage in which dreaming occurs. When you enter into REM sleep, your breathing becomes fast, irregular and shallow. Your eyes will move rapidly and your muscles become immobile. Heart rate and blood pressure increase. Men may develop erections. About 20 percent of sleep is REM sleep for adults.
REM sleep is also the phase of sleep in which you dream. This sleep phase begins about 70 to 90 minutes after you fall asleep. The first sleep cycle has a shorter phase of REM sleep. Toward morning, the time spent in REM sleep increases and the deep sleep stages decrease.

Researchers do not fully understand REM sleep and dreaming. They know it is important in the creation of long-term memories. If a person’s REM sleep is disrupted, the next sleep cycle does not follow the normal order, but often goes directly to REM sleep until the previous night’s lost REM time is made up.

World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

The article on sleep comes directly from The Stages of Sleep
pre-quote: quote from The Killers’ A Dustland Fairytale
Phase 1: from Howie Day’s Collide
Phase 2: from Leonard Cohen’s Be for real
Phase 3: from The Killers’ A Dustland Fairytale
Phase 4: from Dire Straits’ Romeo and Juliet
Phase 5: from Arthur O’ Shaughnessy’s Ode

Merry Christmas

during a particularly angst-filled phase about my writing, i found the following video

and its message took me in,
like a much-needed hug
after a long day
and gently said

‘it’s okay.
i understand.
you’ll be alright.’

so now i pass it on to you:

Presenting:
Elizabeth Gilbert on a new way to think about creativity

the video store

I pop in at the video store quite frequently. It’s only five minutes away, and whenever I get into the car, I think that I’m to go get something to watch. But I rarely get back into the car again with a movie in my hand.

I tried to figure out why today, as I found myself once again walking aimlessly up and down the aisles. It’s not that the movies I want are all out, I realized, it’s that I actually come to see which movies are out. he’s just not that into you had no available copies, making me wonder whether a group of girlfriends were laughing at it at that very moment. the Boy in Striped Pajamas had also been taken, perhaps by a dad looking for a thoughtful movie for Family Evening? And who had stopped by Requiem for a Dream, and then decided not to take it out?

And as more of these stories filled my head, I came to see: it’s not a movie I want to watch – but glimpses of other people’s lives.

she stumbles upon a true thing mid-conversation

her friend: “So, is it that you want a boyfriend again?”
her: “No, I just want him back.”
her friend: “Because you want to be in love again?”
her: “No. Because I want to stop hurting.”

“please just take these photos from my hands”

While you were there, and I was here (and we were one, apart), music became the way that we’d speak. Sometimes our words would falter, and it was then that we had to use the words of others, public words made private. Snow Patrol was your favourite, and so it became mine too. A long day would demand Chasing Cars, a reminder of the times we’d spent together (do you remember?), lying on picnic blankets under giant trees, which kindly spread their shade over us like bodyguards watching against the intrusion of time. The times we fought, it was me who’d start quoting Hands Open in sorrow, and you who’d stop me before I was 6 foot under. Afterwards, (after it all, I mean) it was just one song that’d play on loop over and over again on my mp3 player, from my laptop, through my head: You could be happy and I won’t know, but you weren’t happy the day I watched you go.

I’ve stopped searching their songs for a hidden meaning, but there are moments when a lyric will still hit me afresh like a snowball caught by a face, and though I know you’ve long ceased to send me messages through others’ words, I wonder if this one’s meant for me too.

Is it? (Don’t say yes.)

I’m running out of ways to make you see
I want you to stay here beside me
I won’t be ok and I won’t pretend I am
So just tell me today and take my hand
Please take my hand
Please take my hand

Just say yes, just say there’s nothing holding you back
It’s not a test, nor a trick of the mind
Only love

It’s so simple and you know it is
You know it is, yeah
We can’t be to and fro like this
All our lives
You’re the only way to me
The path is clear
What do I have to say to you
For Gods sake, dear

Just say yes, just say there’s nothing holding you back
It’s not a test, nor a trick of the mind
Only love

- Snow Patrol Just Say Yes

extract from Chasing Cars

We’ll do it all, everything, on our own.
We don’t need anything, or anyone.

If I lay here, if I just lay here
Would you lie with me, and just forget the world.

extract from Hands Open

It’s hard to argue when you won’t stop making sense
But my tongue still misbehaves, and keeps digging my own grave.

note: the quote is from You could be happy, and the title of this post is also a title of one of Snow Patrol’s songs.

full-moon ritual

C packed our cooler bags with one red wine, one white; S fetched the picnic blankets; and me being the only girl at that point and the only one who doesn’t really drink, filled my water bottle with water, and was allowed to carry that out.

Down the street we walked. Summer nights are the best.
Past one, two, three houses, then into House Number Four we went, bringing noise and laughter in with us, and walking out with A and M.

Down we carried on. Summer breezes are the sweetest.
Past five, four, three, two, one houses, then across we walked from crunchy tar to soft grass. And there, by the park swings, stilled by the night, S spread our blankets, C unpacked the wine, and all of us plonked down, passing around glasses, bottles, jokes and stories.

Then the full moon rose, and we all stopped to admire its beauty. But eventually, one by one, we turned our heads back to each other and continued in conversation, the moon’s splendour forgotten in the joy of being together.

And that’s how it should be.

in my head, there are no question marks.

in my head, there are no question marks.

(i didn’t have to decide whether writing for myself was enough, whether writing for you was enough, whether writing for an unknown audience of people who’d somehow stumbled upon this site was enough.)

but once the words are out there, there are too many.

clair de lune

adagio sostenuto

We drove home together last night, under a crisp night sky that crinkled around the full moon’s edges. I can’t remember seeing it so sharply defined before. Perhaps the moon, after years of peeking through windows at pictures of itself displayed on fridges, hung over fireplaces, and stuck onto bedroom walls, had finally become convinced by the conviction of childhood that this was what it should look like: a 5 cent piece stuck center-perfect on black scribblings (sometimes midnight blue, when the black crayon had run out) that left gashes of yellowing newsprint open where a little hand had grown tired of colouring in. As I felt the roughness of the steering wheel with my hands, I could almost imagine how the reeded coin edges of the moon’s newfound identity was holding the night back from its usual embrace.

You were asking about my plans for the future – whether I’d be staying here forever, or moving along soon. Or, maybe you were talking about the movie we’d watched earlier. It could be that we just sat in silence, listening to Tracy Chapman’s voice fill the car. I can’t remember. It wasn’t important. The shifting moonlight had uncovered a dark shadow: my future was not with you, and your future was not with me.

allegretto

near him
i glow
like the moon:

reflecting the Sun

presto agitato

It’s not your fault.
It never was.
It is the fault of a remembering heart.

I’m driving home in a silence that stretches on like the road in front of me. Tired of the hush of night, I switch the CD player on. It’s Tracy Chapman again, and as she starts, I can’t help but think of the last time I drove this way listening to this very song. The only difference is that you were still with me. But as she carries on, her words take me back further, past our past, and into memories of him: I’ve longed for you, and I have desired, to see your face, your smile, to be with you wherever you are . I glance outwards. A cloud is slowly drifting like a sheet of tracing paper across the quarter moon. The blurriness it brings reminds me of the photo kept in the shoebox under my desk: a filmy memento of a now distant moment. I used to know its details so well: how he’d tickled my arm a split second before the flash, pixelating our happiness all over a 4X6 we’d later laugh over. Stop. I switch off Tracy’s voice. There was no need to finish the rest of the song – I’d heard it all before. Looking out of the window again for something to distract me, I watch the cloud pass safely across the moon’s siren glow.  Just one more phase, the grinning Cheshire crescent, and then it’ll be new moon. I carry on in silence, ever closer to home.

smoking can kill

I smoke Pall Malls
so that I have to
think of you
40 times a day

- postcard in Postsecret

metamorphosis

Your skin and bones
Turn into something
beautiful

- Coldplay yellow