Lilith Saintcrow

In the deep middle of a gruesome night, it really can. When everyone else is asleep and life spreads to either side, both past and present, in a smoking wasteland where the wind is the echo of dreadful wings. When you’ve tossed and turned, stared at the ceiling, merged plot lines in your head. When both sides of your pillow are hot as a fresh pancake. When your body aches in each cell, every atom of it crying out for a repair that is no less than a complete unmaking. When you’re done with life, and life is done with you, when you’ve marred everything so completely that the only way to fix it is to wipe the board clean, scatter the chess pieces, rip up the drawing and start new…

…that’s when a book can save your life.

I finished Lukyanenko’s Night Watch early last night (thank you, TS, you ROCK) and settled down to sleep…only to find I couldn’t. Everyone else was asleep–the DHM in the living room, since every once in a while he falls asleep on the floor and I can’t wake him until 3AM; the Little Prince had been in his bed but had wandered out into the hall and been felled by Morpheus (I know better than to move him, since he throws a fit if he wakes up anywhere else on nights like this. So I just covered him with a blanket.) and the Princess, snoozing deliberately and thoughtfully in her own bed, with the innocence only a child can display.

There was just me up. Even the cats were sprawled in various attitudes of relaxation–two of them curled up with the Little Prince under the blanket, the other with the Princess.

I am a champion, career insomniac. Still, it is a lonely disability. I envy those who can sleep soundly. Ever since my hypervigilant childhood I’ve had trouble with relinquishing consciousness. It is too easy for someone to hurt me while I lay slumbering. I used to stay up for three or four nights in a row, listening to Mahler’s Fourth, before I could collapse on the fourth or fifth day. And of course, one of the things I love about the DHM is that I can relax most of the time, certain he won’t use the vulnerability of sleep against me.

So there I was. Clock ticking. Sharks circling. Dark water up to my chin, cold creeping in, no moon to light my way and my life suddenly a short circle, a straightjacket, a slide down the slope into a world where even madness is denied.

So I picked up Nabokov. The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, to be exact.

And lo, after ten pages I was better. After twenty I was safe from the sharks. After fifty I was all right…and by the end of the book, I was able to sleep. The DHM wandered into the bedroom, having awakened of his own accord. One spinal adjustment later and he settled in to read about Tesla or some such, loyally keeping me company. When he turned his light off all was well with the world, and I finished out Sebastian Knight slowly and richly, my mouth full of the taste of safety.

My parents used to wonder why I read. My teachers were in despair over my habit of reading in class and still producing the right answers when called on. My friends didn’t understand my habit of carrying more books–textbooks had largely robbed them of the ability to take joy in the written word. And as I’ve grown older, surrounding myself mostly with book people and never straying very far from the publishing business, I still find the world populated mostly with people who don’t understand that a book is not just a collection of pages and ink.

It is magic. It can be entertainment, the vehicle of truth, a romp of laughter, a roll under an August moon when a warm night gets into the blood and produces howling. It can be sorely-needed information, a ragged old friend, an exciting new lover. Books can be all this, and more.

But at the bottom line, books for me are safety. They are my companions in those long hours in the trenches, when the battlefield is silent but the war is not over, when sleep is a danger and the world a garden of savage beings. They are the foxhole I creep to when my own head is unsecure. Some books speak to me across an abyss of time and meaning, reminding me that I am not alone.

That is priceless.

Related posts:

1. Go Forth And Kick Butt
2. Happy Solstice, Update, and Jacqueline Carey
3. It’s 4AM. Do You Know Where Your Characters Are?

This entry was posted on Monday, July 31st, 2006 at 10:02 am and is filed under Rant Rant Rave, Real Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.