Stumblin' in the darkness

Sometimes the only thing you can do is leave everything behind and hit the road. The boy made his way through the darkness, reluctantly lighting his way with a torch for fear he might come off the road. It was a long and empty stretch that cut through the hill like the wind cut through the boy's thin shirt. The moon was nothing but a whispered promise in a cloud too far away to make out any shape.

As he walked he felt a vehicle coming up from behind. He couldn't hear it, because he had music playing in his ears, and he couldn't see it, because the lights were obfuscated by the hillside. But he felt it, and moved to the side of the road. Ten minutes later it came up, a red four wheel drive towing a trailer. The boy  felt it slow down, nearly to a walking pace. Much slower than caution passing a pedestrian would dictate. The boy stared at the ground, continued to walk and adopted the face he had perfected when he used to wander around the city late at night. The don't fuck with me face. Whether it was the look or the stride, the four wheel drive picked up its speed and disappeared around a bend. By the time the boy reached the top of the hill, it was nowhere in sight.

A little bit further down on his return journey, the boy stopped and lay down on the road. He felt the cold fingers of the tarmac slide through his shirt, arguing with the sharp stones as to who had strongest claim on his soft flesh. While they debated the boy stared up at the stars.

Sometimes the night sky looked just like a ceiling with lots of fake glow-in-the-dark stickers patched up carelessly. When he craned his neck back the ceiling stretched on, and he could fancy that it was slowly descending upon him, a black sky trying to meet the black road, with him caught in the middle. Sometimes it looked so big that he felt it existed solely for himself. Something so big couldn't have any other purpose than to serve the person looking through it.

The boy glanced sideways and saw the moon, now bloated and yellow, not so much floating up into the sky as being reluctantly pulled. Its colour made him think of the sun, and he thought of the moon as simply the sun sliding back from its track, slipping down an unseen slope to another life. If that happened, the boy thought, would we all develop night vision, or would we just create more lights?

After maybe an hour the cold part of the road finished its argument with the sharp part. The boy rose, teeth chattering, and was unsure as to whether he was the shivering figure standing upright or the black shadow stretched out down the hill. There's something about a shadow cast by the moon that is infinitely more life-like than one cast by the sun. As the boy walked he tried to tell the difference, but had little luck. This time he left the torch off and both he and his shadow, whichever was which, slowly made their way back down the hill as the moon watched on, thinking its own thoughts.

Things that have happened over the past few weeks

1. I watched a foal get shot in the head after breaking his leg.
2. I went to the Sydney Writers' Festival, found a little inspiration to write, then came home to utter bedlam and have barely even read anything, let alone started writing.
3. I've been missing Angie who is over in Perth for four months.
4. I've been incredibly tempted to tweet horrible things about guests and staff on our official resort twitter site and somehow, thankfully, resisted.
5. I rode my bike approximately 60km in one day and found out the hard way I'm not as fit as I thought I was.
6. I just remembered now I need to put the chickens to bed. Not a huge thing that's happened, but very current.
7. I finally received a book of short stories that I was published in. When I say book, it's more like a zine. But the publishers call it a book, so who am I to argue?

Still getting wet

I should try to write in here more often.

I just read back through the last post and am happy to report that I've tossed the food books in the recycling. Well, not entirely, but after reading through a few different books at once and finding that not only did they contradict each other but contradicted themselves, sometimes within a couple of pages, I decided that I was probably the best authority on what food I should put into my body. I came to the conclusion that if I like it and I don't eat my own weight in it each day (like I used to down chocolate), then I'm probably going to keep waking up in the morning.

So far I feel exactly the same as I did when I was spending an extra two hours a day trying to prepare something that was supposedly ideal for my blood, body, brain, personality, sense of humour type. I still have enough energy to spend 12 hours a day working in the office (hmm, that I need to work on) and I'm sleeping just fine (no long term effects from my polyphasic experiment so far.)

My only relatively new personal development news is that in September I'm going to embark on a month long yoga teacher training. I worked out that the three yoga teachers here are more often than not unable to take the classes we advertise as being available every day, so I thought I might be able to take at least beginner classes. It's also going to be a nice education for me, and it's happening less than a minute's walk from my door, so how could I refuse? Living with the teacher has its advantages, so I'm already reading one of the highly recommended books for the course, The Heart Of Yoga by T.K.V. Desikachar. I'm enjoying it a lot, it seems to make a lot of sense. There's a lot of talk in there about not just āsanas but working on the mind and perspective.


I got to thinking about this, and noticed how so many people I seem to come into contact with now are so focussed on becoming an alpha human, a creature who can drop all earthly vices and negativity and abide as the most calm, spiritual and positive being imaginable. And yet, they have just as many or more issues than the drunken moron I used to sell merch to, who thought dribbling his warm beer over himself was about as spiritual as life got. Somehow, all this inner work is just not translating from the serene reading in bed at night to the hard reality of actually living life. To my mind it's like we're all spending a lot of time drying ourselves furiously with a large, fluffy towel in the comforts of our house before walking out in the rain thinking we're going to stay dry. The best we can hope for is that we remember to keep hold of that towel so at least we have a piece of damp material to hold over our heads when the downpour begins.


It's not an analogy that I think serves as an excuse to forget it all and start shooting smack, but it's an interesting thing that I try to keep in mind when I find myself swearing at the computer or losing my temper with someone who works with me. As Desikachar observes in his book, personal development is not something designed for our age of haste, it's something that will take a lifetime. Not even can, but will. Anyone who thinks otherwise, as far as I can gather, is probably only setting themselves back further.

My Bloody Diet

In my ongoing search for various experiments to inflict upon my unsuspecting body, last week I started a blood type diet. There is one train of thought, so far as I can tell originating from a couple of American naturopaths (a father and son team at that), that suggests that your perfect diet can be completely dictated by your blood type.

I should note that when I talk about diet I am talking about overall strategies for eating and health, not some ridiculous plan to get thin. I don't need to get thinner. If I got any thinner I could fit into the fax machine and send myself around the world for almost nothing.

So I started thinking about this after a visit to the local Port Macquarie kinesiologist, acupuncturist, masseuse, naturopath and all round health conscious person Jacqualine O'Brien. Most of the people living here have suddenly developed an addiction to seeing her, to the point where she's talking about making day trips out here to save all of us coming in so often. For my part, she's been helping to realign my skeleton and musculature system that seems hellbent on slowly turning me into a human variety of Angothra. It's working well.

But after one visit Pam, who was also there, was getting a blood test. I have never known what blood type I am, so I asked to be pricked as well. Turns out I'm an A. I don't know whether I'm positive or negative. From what I've read this has little to do with anything of any use, so I don't really care.

After Mark told me I was an A (and oohed and aahed over my exquisite blood specimen that did exactly what an A type blood specimen should), he gave me a few pages that talked about the best diet for my blood type. As these things tend to happen, a couple of days earlier Angie's aunt who had been visiting had left us a book called Eat Right For Your Type. Funnily enough, it was written by the same two dudes I mentioned above, and was where this short summary that Mark handed over came from.

The most interesting and relieving thing I noticed was that for an A blood type, the best possible diet you can have is vegetarian. They recommend that if you're an A blood type and not vegetarian, you should seriously contemplate it. Meat for you is like glue for horses. You don't want to go there.

It was actually nice to see that a lot of foods I like eating (lemons, ginger, apples, grains, lentils, even chocolate - that's right, chocolate!) are good for me. It even recommends I have half a lemon in a glass of water every morning (I've just been downing the juice of a whole one straight - that's how I roll). The downsides were that I'm not supposed to eat cheese, which is something I've always consumed in almost as large quantities as chocolate. I'm "allowed" goat's cheese, feta, ricotta and mozarella, but only in small amounts. It was also saddening to find that oranges and bananas, my two favourite fruits, and well and truly in the avoid camp. So much so that the book talks about oranges for a whole paragraph, explaining how they know how much us A types like them but for the love of God, leave them alone because they'll turn our stomach linings into something the Toxic Avenger might blow out of his nose.

Like most of these kinds of things I'm reserving a healthy amount of skepticism, but an eager and open mind to see what happens. I've been keeping almost religiously to the diet for the past week, and haven't yet noticed any specific health improvements except perhaps for slightly more energy. Now, I normally have more energy than most people (or has Henry Rollins has offered in regards to his own cynicism, more than the average stadium of people). But Jacqualine told me that she feels my body is almost constantly in fight or flight mode, ready to punch on or run every second I'm awake. This might also explain why I can nap so well - at the mere hint of sleep, my body instantly shuts down in an attempt to make the most of the rest period. She believes the extra energy I'm feeling could well be a more normal kind of energy, meaning I'm using real energy instead of working off reserves all the time that are meant to be just that - reserved for something special (like facing down a charging bull, which nearly happened yesterday, but that's another story).

So I figure I'll stick to this for a few weeks, or at least for as long as I can go without cheddar, and see what happens. If I can become a super healthy machine, then perhaps I'll keep with it. If not, I'll go back to normal, which isn't that far from the diet anyway. It just has more cheese.

Star struck

I've really got to find some motivation to write in here more often now that I don't have the at-hand inspiration of sleep deprivation and the amusing things it does to the body to analyse. Perhaps I just don't lead a very interesting life out here in the country.

The resort here set up its own Twitter account quite a few months ago. I tried to get the other staff interested in tweeting but nobody, and I mean nobody at all, has any interest in being involved. They don't see the point. In fact, we were talking about deleting the account until someone driving past one day set their phone to collect tweets from people in the area. He was surprised to find someone tweeting near him when he was in the middle of absolutely nowhere, and pulled in to visit. As a result we had a decent sized church reunion held here with a much bigger one planned for next year. So Twitter became an accepted, however grudgingly, form of promotion.

I'm not the most technically capable nor knowledgable person you will ever find. I resisted Facebook for ages, and I don't have my own Twitter account because I just don't enjoy people's company enough to want to interact with them 24 hours per day. I enjoy Craig time, I love having space to hide away to myself, reading books that don't need to be charged, listening to albums I need to physically place on a turntable or in a CD player. I'm not about to argue that the world shouldn't be speeding along its technological path, and I'm not about to start marching in the streets to prevent the mass slaughter of CDs, but I'm also not going to deny I love kicking it old school.

But I've been listening to some lectures from SlowTV that discuss Twitter, and I've slowly been learning what it's supposed to be about. (Phil here tried to tell me yesterday that it was about whatever anyone wanted it to be about, but I disagree, I think that if the majority think it's about something then that's what it's about. You can disagree but you're not going to be communicating with the rest of the Twitter world who don't agree with you.) To date I've just been updating with the most banal and esoterical snippets you could imagine. I mean, I try to post interesting things but for god's sake, we live in a place where the highlights of some days are that we got eight eggs from the chickens instead of seven.

But apparently it's all about sharing and caring. Posting lots of interesting links and retweeting lots of interesting tweets. I've been contemplating spending more time on there so that our resort personna attracts more friends and hence more promotion. It just makes sense.

So I added a couple more people, namely the journalists Leigh Sales and John Birmingham. I read both their work in The Monthly regularly, and like the cut of their jib, so to say. (On a side note, Phil told me that Leigh Sales is a regular at the Bodymindlife Yoga Studio he runs in Surry Hills - small world.) The next morning I logged on to find, much to my shock, John Birmingham was following us in return.

I love the guy's writing. He Died With A Felafel In His Hand is the obvious hit, however I absolutely adore his "unauthorised biography" of Sydney, the vast Leviathon. In terms of research and information it's as compact as Robert Hughe's The Fatal Shore, but with a much sharper sense of humour. Okay, so Hughes's tome has no sense of humour. Birmingham has the attitude of an illiterate larrikan except he can actually write. It's a wonderful mix, especially when you're reading his fascinating political articles.

I noticed him following us and double checked to make sure it was the real Birmingham (links to his articles, notes on his drunken escapades - yep, definitely him). I then started thinking, "How can I continue to tweet the tweets of the past with John Birmingham reading them?" Suddenly it's not just a throw away comment to bust out before signing in a group booking, it's a literary creation that has to be good enough for the eyes of a revered and respected (if only by me, I think only one other person here knows who he is) author.

I now plan on working on my tweets for at least two hours per missive, and send it off to Jude who lives here and is an editor in her own right for checking. I'll attempt to keep character, plot and a thematic brilliance that not only enlightens on life here at Jasper's, but consists of clever societal undertones and comments on the wider world we live in.

Christ, and I thought writing stories was a challenge.

Listening to the fat lady

I'd like to think of this as not so much giving up, but reaching what became the logical conclusion of the experiment.

Despite my foolhardy stubborness and resolve, my body has just been fighting against this experiment a little too much for my liking. After my rousing call to arms in the last post, and my certain belief that I would be able to hold strong through the night, I was woken at 7am sitting bolt upright in a lounge in Reception, once again having no recollection of getting there. From my best estimates I must have sat down there a little after 1am and just dropped off to sleep (whilst sitting bolt upright...for six hours).

It doesn't seem to make sense for me to keep pushing it at this point. From what I've read on polyphasic sleeping, the main reason for adaptation not taking place seems to be related to either not sticking to the nap times, or a poor diet. In my case, I have stuck to the times so religiously that at each nap I was sitting with a clock counting down to the minute, and my organic vegetarian diet really couldn't be much better in my opinion. I'd even completely cut out refined sugars before the experiment began, and I never take caffeine anyway.

When I also took into consideration the fact that not one of my oversleeps occured after a nap (that is, sleeping through an alarm), but most of them involved blacking out at some point during a waking phase and waking up in a different place with no memory of getting there, it also seemed that perhaps this wasn't the best thing to be doing to myself.

It's saddening and disappointing to be sure, but I'm happy with my decision to end it here. I realised that I was accomplishing none of what I hoped to - I was virtually unable to read or write due to fatigue, and simply ended up working more hours to stay awake. Part of my goal has been to actually work fewer hours (it's not unusual for me to rack up between twelve to fifteen hours a day here), so to have more waking hours that get devoted solely to work is a bit of a defeat in that sense.

Even more difficult was my huge drop in energy. I've always been quite fit, and during this experiment I went from running and swimming each morning, doing yoga and walking up a mountain each night to one walk a day that rarely stretched to the top of the mountain without rest stops needing to be added. I hate that feeling of fatigue and lethargy, it doesn't suit my mental attitude on any level.

I do know that all of the above would have to be negotiated during the adaptation phase, I just expected that phase to be a lot shorter than it was. I suppose it also didn't help having some really frantic days here that, although I was still able to fit my naps in on time, would have contributed to my overall exhaustion quite a lot.

There are some psychological factors at play too, not least of all the fact I just really miss sleeping next to my girlfriend. Even if she does toss and turn and snore. Aside from that, being someone who has never taken drugs or alcohol, sleep seemed to be the one place I would be able to retreat to in order to deal with any kind of major stress or upset. I've had one of those patches during this experiment, and I noticed a few days later how much it had affected me by not having that space to retreat to. Obviously my brain has its own self help centre that only opens when my consciousness has shut down, and it probably needs that time to operate efficiently.

I will miss the amazingly lucid dreams I was having, although I've just been thinking that I haven't even had any of those over the past week. I don't think I've recalled a single dream since I posted that information about astral traveling, come to think of it.

So, that's it then. Thanks to everyone for the supportive words, and thanks to all the kids on the Trypolyphasic.com forum who gave good advice and support as well. I'll probably keep the blog going, although I may not update it quite daily as I have been. My life isn't really that exciting!

If anyone has any ideas for another crazy experiment they think I might be interested in trying and documenting for posterity, let me know. I'm always up for something fun. I might start working toward an old idea of a "Walk To Wauchope" - a 60km walk along the Oxley Highway that I want to see if I can make in a single day. I probably just need to get a good night's sleep before I set off.

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.

Be careful what you wish for

Last night I wrote a very smug post about the lack of excitement in a polyphasic sleep schedule, how once the romance wore off it really became quite a dull topic to be rabbiting on about day after day. Of course, in the true style of a manifesting universe, I was handed something to write about approximately thirty minutes later when I fell asleep and woke up at 8am.

I didn't sleep the entire night. I think I drifted off whilst reading (lying down on the couch in the library with a faint lamp glowing, not one of the smartest things I've done during this experiment). I kept waking intermittently, blinking stupidly and thinking how I really needed to get up off the couch. This was usually followed by a prolonged period of sitting there in the dim light, staring straight ahead and trying to start my brain like you would a gas oven with a wet match. Eventually I would lie down and go back to sleep.

I did a lot of soul searching today to decide on my next course of action. If I listen to the kids on the forums, I think they would recommend my sleeping monophasically for a week or two then starting again. If I listen to my mum or my friend Kaz I would give the whole thing up and sleep like a normal person again. I have, however, decided to just stick at it. We have three fairly quiet weeks in a row here (at least, at the moment that's how it looks, but anything could happen), and if I reset my system now we'll be busy again right when I'm trying to adapt. I suspect my discretions have occured simply due to being exhausted from so much work (and so little sleep), so I think it's much smarter to try to get adapted when the job's not so demanding. I also think it will be easier to just knuckle down and harden up on my resolve and dedication than to start from scratch.

I also just hate to be beaten by an experiment. I mean, Pavlina made it look so goddamn easy.

If I'm going to make this work I have realised I need to put some precautions in place. Firstly, I need to stay out of the library except for when I sleep. It's a beautiful room, so small and musty and warm and dark and perfect for falling asleep when you least want to. It's such a shame, I love spending time in there and it makes so much sense to make that my room away from room at night, but it's a deathtrap for someone trying to stay awake.

Actually, that's pretty much the only precaution. None of my over sleeps have actually happened at the end of a nap - all of them have been in the middle of a waking period when I've simply blacked out. I suspect this will happen a lot less if I spend more time in the office which I mentally associate with work mode. Perhaps eventually I'll be able to slide back into my beloved library, but until then I think it's down here.

So here's hoping it works, if I continue to crash I may have to accept it's just not going to happen for me. But for now, I'm all about the naps.

Polyphasic sleep schedule Day Fifteen

How quickly an experiment can lose its charm, its interest, its sex appeal. I'm just over two weeks in and I can't think of too much to say that I haven't said before. It's not that I've had enough of the experiment - to the contrary - I'm just struggling to come up with an angle that will keep people reading.

It's a strange thing to write about, when you really stop to think about it. "I'm going to write a gripping, on-going saga about not doing something. Entry 76: Today, I didn't do it again!"

Well, today I didn't do it again, although at times (such as during a three hour meeting this morning) I wanted to. Generally, everything seems to be evening out at the moment. The naps don't feel quite so far apart at night, and not quite so close together during the day. I feel tired from time to time, especially around 5am and sometimes between 6:30-9am, but it's not as debilitating as it has been on occasion over the last two weeks.

I have noticed an unexpected drop in motivation to achieve something over the last few nights, culminating in marathon Facebook sessions (with a nasty comedown once I realise I've spent four hours sitting there refreshing the same list of notes about people I don't even really know or care about), and a couple of long movie watching sessions. This wasn't what I signed up for! I signed up for growth and education and inspiration! No need to point out the irony of my degrading computer media in a blog either, I'm bemusedly aware of my own contradictions. I decided that I need to work out a schedule that involves yoga, writing and reading, although here we are, almost at midnight, and all I've done is chat to my mum on Facebook, chase some bugs out of our room for Angie, and write this blog.

Oh well, nothing like the present. This is the plan for the rest of the evening: From now until 12:30am I'm going to publish this then go and read (I still can't read too long at night without drifting off to sleep). From 12:30am-2am it'll be yoga and meditation. Nap time at 2am. From 2:20am or thereabouts I'll work on a short story for as long as I can handle sitting there looking at a computer screen. I'll go for a walk around 5am, right as I start to get the death sleep symptoms.

You are my witnesses, if I fail I give you permission to leave defamatory comments about my alleged sexual proclivities.

Mini meltdown

I write tonight's post wearing heavy boots, as Oskar Schell might say. Once again, as I felt some progress being made, I had a pretty disappointing set back. I'm still hoping it's a case of two steps forward, one step back rather than the reversal, but still, it's hard to swallow.

Last night, after a black out the night before and a day spent feeling hungover and groggy, I had the best night yet. There were no signs of tiredness at all until right before the 6am nap (although that may have been helped along by an impromptu two hour semi-business phone meeting with my business partner Morgs at 2am). I was generally feeling quite pleased with myself until after the 10am nap.

I'm still not sure why but after that nap I slipped into a foul mood that just grew more and more mephitic as the day wore on. It could have been the sheer pressure we were all under yesterday with four separate groups staying here - one of the more complicated logistical days we've had since being here, it may have been the guilt of trying to grab last minute naps in the midst of all that, knowing I was leaving everyone to deal with those pressures alone for up to half an hour at a time, it may have just been time for me to have a tantrum (I think we all need to have little tantrums from time to time and blow off some steam). Whatever the reason, I was an obnoxious jerk to most of my friends here (especially Angie, horribly enough - why do the ones we love most always bear the brunt of these things?), and retreated to the library at around 10pm for my nap and final escape from work.

Coming out of it, a couple of people tried to come in and talk and I steadfastly refused (including Angie). Normally in moods like this my body's only defense, its only means of coming back to some kind of equilibrium, is to shut down and sleep it off. This is exactly what happened last night, which means another five hour period slipped away from me.

As I observed last time, even with the heightened emotional intensity of this discretion in the schedule, I need to remember that it's just an experiment, and although I'm personally acting as lab rat, I still need to maintain some kind of neutral distance and simply observe what I'm going through rather than judge it at this stage. Now that I'm awake my anger's gone (leaving an uncomfortable, slight nausea in my stomach and my friend Dan's predicted metallic taste in my mouth), and I can look at the whole situation a little more calmly.

I guess no matter what the specific reason for my mood was, whether it was due to sleep deprivation, the workload of the past two days or just an emotional culmination of events that was bound to happen anyway, I really need to spend some more time on this schedule working on myself. One session of yoga and a half arsed five minute meditation around falling asleep each day is probably not sufficient. Instead of cramming more work into the night (a lot of nights I'm spending a bit more time working on accounts, cleaning rooms and other bits and pieces around the resort), I probably need to spend more time focussed on keeping my mind and body a little more healthy. Just eating really well, which I am, is not enough. This probably means less time on here as well and more time out walking at night, meditating, reading and writing. Funnily enough, all the things I wanted to do more of in the first place, which partly prompted this whole experiment.

So the end of result of today is another falter (not a failure), and a view of what needs to be done. Onward and upward, as they say!