Polyphasic sleep schedule Day Seventeen

Oh man, I knew this was going to hurt.

My night of transgression has come back and bitten me hard, but I don't think I've slipped quite as far down the zombie scale as I found myself the first time around. However, last night was a killer. I was doing my best to research some information for a story I'm writing and found myself looking at the same page for around two hours, I just could not seem to focus on any of the words, or the sentences, or practically anything. For all I knew, I was staring at a website, or my own reflection, or the answer to life, the universe and everything. None of it made sense, it just served as a meagre focal point to stop myself from collapsing head first onto the keyboard. I managed to drag myself through to my 6am nap, then had a different task of dealing with work.

Today has been hard, but not impossible. We had a few last minute trials to deal with, and I'm yet to decide whether my fugue helped me deal with them without too much stress, or whether what little stress there was came courtesy of the fugue. Sometimes it feels a little like the chicken and the egg conundrum.

I once read a story about Nirvana's singer, Kurt Cobain, when he was at school. It's probably a myth, but it's a great story. Allegedly there was a school bully who loved nothing more than picking on the poor Cobain, until one day he got more than he bargained for. He punched Cobain in the face, knocking him to the ground. As a group of fascinated kids circled around, Cobain pulled himself to his feet, faced his tormentor, and gave him the finger. Outraged, the bully threw another punch, harder than the first. Cobain dropped, then managed to stand and gave him the finger again. This drew some laughter from the crowd, which to the bully was like a red flag to a bull. He launched again, and again, and again. Cobain didn't once raise his fist, only his middle finger, each and every time. Eventually the onlookers were cheering him and villifying the bully, and hey presto, no more problems with the bully.

I tried to evoke the spirit of that story today, and every time I felt sleep come charging up on me like a driverless train I stood firm and gave it the finger. From time to time I fell, and it hurt, and I'm sure I'll be blowing blood from my nose for the next week, but still there was that certain smug satisfaction of fighting back without resorting to the same base violence. Of course, I say that now when it's not quite midnight and I still have the spiraling eons of the night to survive, but it's just one little finger you need to raise. Raise it enough and the rest should take care of itself.