Sleep

“Death is something that makes men weep,

Yet one-third of life is spent in sleep!”

—Lord Byron

I like to sleep with the window open when the weather is warm enough. (I heard that Pierre Trudeau also did, but his wife Margaret didn’t like it.) Sometimes there’s noise outside, especially on Wednesday nights when they pick up the trash, but that’s a price I’m willing to pay.

On Wednesday morning I woke up to my open window and there was a funny smell in the air, a bit like someone was burning tar or barbecuing nearby.  It was the smoke from the wildfires reaching Toronto!  I closed my windows for several days, though now I’ve opened them again.

I’m hoping that this smoke in big cities like New York will be a turning point, and we’ll finally get serious about slowing down climate change.  Maybe this will turn out to be another “Where were you when…” moment, like 9/11 and the onset of covid.  Someone on Twitter was saying that supporters of a Green New Deal aren’t serious, and I responded, “Is it more serious to do nothing and hope that things work out?”

I was in London a decade ago and went to Roger Rhys’ one-man show talking about Shakespeare and such.  I’m afraid I dozed off during the show!  I sure hope Roger didn’t notice…  I also got sleepy watching the Greenland movie The Journal of Knud Rasmussen.  Something about those snowy Arctic locations makes me feel like hibernating!

Do you like lullabies?  I recently realized that many of my favourite musical pieces are berceuses.  I remember when the FM CBC had an afternoon music show titled Disc Drive and they’d sign off with the berceuse from Gabriel Faure’s Dolly Suite.