The Joys of Sleeplessness

One of the great and paradoxical joys of my deepening middle age is the absence of sleep.

I remember, when I was twenty or thirty, that sleep  once filled an entire night.  I'd lie down, close my eyes, and when I awoke, it would be morning.  

Technically, this is still true, but by "morning" I now mean "one in the morning" or "four in the morning."  Some of this is a factor of my fifty six year old bladder.  Some is a factor of my tendency to go to sleep waaaay earlier.  By ten thirty in the PM, I'm typically all tuckered out.

But much of it is just me gettin' old.  I'll wake, and be fully awake, with the night still stretching out ahead of me.

There've been times, when I was younger, when I've experienced insomnia.  Typically, they were times of intense disruption and anxiety, when I'd wake with my mind churning and a knot in my gut.  In such circumstances, the absence of sleep can become a self-reinforcing waking nightmare, as you rouse, get stressed about the fact that you aren't sleeping, and then the stress of not sleeping itself is enough to keep you tossing and fitful.

For the last few years, though, I've come at those times differently.  I began using the time to pray, and now, that's become my default.  

When I open my eyes to the depth of night, it's a blessing, because that's a great time to pray.  I do pray to begin the day, and during the day, but sometimes there's so much going on that those daytime prayers just don't come.  

Lying there in bed?  It's not like there's anything else I need to be doing.  So I pray.  I'll offer a word of gratitude for sleeplessness itself, and the space it provides to tend to my soul's needs. 

I'll offer thanksgiving for whatever goodness the day served up.  I'll remember folks who are on the church prayer list, and offer words over their struggles.  I'll set the names of friends and family before the Creator of the Universe, and express my yearnings for their wholeness and health.  I'll recall the mess of our world, and those in need.

Eventually, sleep returns to me in its own time.  As I feel myself gently fading, I'll pray the Lord's Prayer, bridging my way back into dreams.

Benedictine Matins it ain't.  It's a far softer and more organic cousin to that monastic prayer.  

Yet it lends me an appreciation for that ancient tradition, one that find gracious purpose in the deep of the night.

Sleek Economies

I've got a thing for nice cars.  I always have.  I was the kid doodling jacked-up Mustangs and Barracudas on the margins of my geometry notebooks when I should have been paying attention in class.  I subscribed to Car and Driver when I was fourteen.  I went with my dad to help haggle for his new car when I was 15.

The vehicles I've owned in  my adult life haven't reflected that hankering.  They've been practical and inexpensive, because my Scots blood can't abide with the thought of spending more money than absolutely necessary.  I also prefer efficient cars, because...well...the planet isn't exactly cooling.  Still, the desire remains, and where my day-to-day is functional, every once in a while, I'll rent something that scratches my itch for power and comfort.

So when the wife said, "hey, let's rent a car for our upcoming road trip to Nashville," I knew exactly what I wanted.  We were travelling just under two thousand miles total over nine days in a rambling VA-NC-TN-KY-WV-PA-WV-MD-VA loop, serving up a mix of mountains and long stretches of superslab, and nothing but nothing is better at devouring miles than a Benz.  

The best of the Benzes is their flagship S Class, particularly in its W222 form, which was produced from 2014 to 2020.  Big, luxe, comfy, and powerful, it was a land-yacht designed for the Autobahn.  With a standard four -liter twin-turbo V8 putting out a nudge over four hundred and sixty horsepower from beneath that long hood, it's serenely capable of humming along all day at 110 while your seat gives you a hot stone massage and lightly perfumed air wafts through the cabin.  It's the sort of car driven by old-money patricians and Russian oligarchs.

Back when people bought cars, that is.

Americans don't really drive cars all that much these days, preferring Compact Utility Vehicles, SUVs, and light trucks.  We like to ride high, and the long low sleekness 1980s-me had always assumed would be the norm for future cars in the 2020s never came to pass.  That means taller and blockier profiles, which means aerodynamic inefficiency, which bites deep into our national fuel use.

That comes at a cost as we travel the wide open spaces of our nation, and I was reminded of this as I reviewed the fuel consumption data at the end of the trip.  

That big ol' Benz, with which we...er..."made good time"...over mountains and plains, as state after state whisked on by?  

Over the whole trip, it averaged just a notch over 27 miles to the gallon.  That means, excessive and powerful though the car was, it was more efficient than the average American light vehicle, which...according to the EPA in 2022...got 26.4 miles to the gallon.  

With two of us in the car, we got more Person-Miles-to-the-Gallon than had I taken the same trip alone in a Prius.  It was nearly twice as efficient as flying.

Not, of course, that being ecologically minded was the point of our trip, but it was a peculiar truth to encounter.