THE ZERO ZONE

Ever since my corporeal ballistics demonstration a couple weeks ago, my sleep has been sketchy at best, I can maybe reach 60% depth for up to 4 hours at a time, at least in bed. Which is ok, I can function well on 5 hours sleep a night. Besides, I like the hallucinogenic quality a bit of sleeplessness gives to the day, the sharper, more psychoangular perspectives, the colors and scents, tastes and textures, though I don't like what it does to the noises, which are rife in Japan, where sonic violation is a way of life, especially around and on trains, with events announced in a kind of desperation using big bells, buzzers and other air-rippers, followed by endless fuzzy details shouted via loudspeakers as though for folks who forgot their hearing aids and nobody seems to notice the general passive quivering of commuter flesh but me, which makes this little ramble all the odder...

For me, sleep has always been a gradual thing: droopy eyelids, blurry words, nodding head, book impacting nose, all sorts of early warnings. But as this sleep deprivation has been accumulating, there's been a kind of cryptonarcoleptic buildup that my conscious mind was initially unaware of, because for the first several postinjury workdays when I boarded the train to head back home, sat down in the seat and began reading as usual, the next thing I knew I was in Takatsuki, halfway back to Kyoto. Subjective duration: less than 1 millisecond.

I've never fallen so asleep so fast. Each time it is such a shock that I can't believe it when I return to the world; I'm so surprised, that I can't fall asleep again. Each evening I board the train now, I'm determined to watch myself reach instant zero, but each time I sit there reading normally, enjoying my book, the train pulls out and the next thing I know I'm in Takatsuki. Every train-home evening. When I'm at home on other days I don't fall asleep like that, at that or any other time of day or night. I want to know how I do it.

Through these thrice-weekly attempts I hope to find out how to hit the zero zone at will, like maybe when I'm in bed and want to fall asleep, or when I'm sitting upright in my chair at my desk in the office after lunch, with my head firmly propped up by my hands and busy blue eyes painted on my eyelids. I deeply appreciate the potential of such a skill not only for myself, but for all the world; how much more peaceful would life be if everyone, especially world leaders, could spend more time at absolute zero?

If all goes well, I should be fully healed in another week or two, and no longer deprived of normal sleep, so on behalf of humanity I've got to move fast.