Sleep Demons: An Insomniac's Memoir
Bill Hayes
Language: English
Pages: 368
ISBN: 0671028146
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Bill Hayes grew up in a family in which the question "How'd you sleep?" was as much a staple at the breakfast table as orange juice or coffee, a question that encouraged genuine reflection and, as it turns out for the author, a legacy of life-shaping implications. If there's such a thing as an insomnia gene, he tells us at the outset of this beautifully written memoir, my father passed it on to me, along with his green eyes and Irish melancholy.
Bill Hayes' life as an insomniac is rooted in the wry trappings of irony: his father ran a Coca-Cola factory, of all things. I've often wondered if all that sugar and caffeine altered my neurochemical makeup. Moving seamlessly to and from his present vantage point in San Francisco, Hayes' narrative affords an intimate look at one man's singular journey through contemporary life -- from his sleep-disturbed childhood through his sleepwalking in adolescence to the height of his insomnia, when his partner struggles with AIDS and Hayes must face an increasingly troubling and debilitating sleep disorder.
Along the way, armed with an infectious curiosity and an obsession with the mysteries of his personal demons, Hayes leads us on a fascinating exploration of disorders such as sleep-talking, narcolepsy, and sleep apnea and contends with all manner of theories and experimentation, from the conceptions of sleep in ancient mythology to today's state-of-the-art sleeping aids and clinics.
As with desire, sleep resists pursuit. It must come find you. Nevertheless, I look for it. This powerful book is the result of Bill Hayes' lifelong search for sleep.
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Could lifeboat bound —bare Clowning legs Europe for Dad tour. follow. camera. for the and arms akimbo sitting in a is —on the deck of a ship 1949. She's on her postcollege grand in taken that same year, at in dress grays in a portrait is Mom his graduation from West Point. Later shots show him in com- bat gear; he landed in South Korea in August of 1950 and took part in the seems drive north. At first be an abstract image taken to cloudy sky ally a first full of.
Shame is King Ahasuerus Old Testament in the of Esther arrives at the decision to honor Mordecai, which saves him from the hanging Haman. King Ahasuerus then hangs planned by secretly the evil Haman instead; the Jewish people are saved through an episode of biblical sleeplessness. Job also suffered insomnia, in addition to his many tragedies: But the night "When is long, I lie and I down, am I full say, 'When of tossing Beyond hope. Job envisions his fate: "The.
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