Late Capitalism & the End of Sleep

[alice wellintown]

Ah! Dementia! This broken remembrancer will be the deeth of me yit.

Maybe it is these Hundred Years of Solitude that have robbed me of my REM.

A common enough theme, the melancholic madness of sleepless daze...so
Shakespeare was robbed by his muse, so Milton had his youth and his
eyes stolen on the wings of somnambulance...so Mason...do we wake or
dream....or are you dreaming all of us...we but your golden
slumbers.....

The Thief
by Abraham Cowley
Thou robb'st my days of business and delights,
  Of sleep thou robb'st my nights ;
  Ah, lovely thief, what wilt thou do?
  What?  rob me of heaven too?
  Even in my prayers thou hauntest me:
  And I, with wild idolatry,
Begin to God, and end them all to thee.
Is it a sin to love, that it should thus
  Like an ill conscience torture us?
  Whate'er I do, where'er I go—
  None guiltless e'er was haunted so!—
  Still, still, methinks, thy face I view,
  And still thy shape does me pursue,
As if, not you me, but I had murdered you.
>From books I strive some remedy to take,
  But thy name all the letters make;
  Whate'er 'tis writ, I find thee there,
  Like points and commas everywhere.
  Me blessed for this let no man hold,
  For I, as Midas did of old,
Perish by turning every thing to gold.
What do I seek, alas, or why do I
  Attempt in vain from thee to fly?
  For, making thee my deity,
  I gave thee then ubiquity.
  My pains resemble hell in this:
  The divine presence there too is,
But to torment men, not to give them bliss.


Tesla, not a reliable source, claims that he sat to read Voltaire,
only to realize that that monster had written nearly one hundred
volumes of small print while consuming seventy-two cups of black joe a
day. Tesla also speaks to the excessive use of coffee and tea.
Moderate use of booze, chewing gum, and tobacco are useful tonics, he
claims.


On 7/19/13, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
> “Sleep is an uncompromising interruption of the theft of time from us
> by capitalism." (p. 10)
>
> "... the solicitude that is essential for the sleeper is not
> qualitatively different from the protectiveness that is required by
> more immediately obvious and acute forms of social suffering." (p. 28)
>
> http://www.versobooks.com/books/1429-24-7
>
> http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=1307&msg=174649
>
> On 7/19/13, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
>> http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2013/07/season-all-natures
>>
>