Napping in the Guest Room

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Napping in the guest room is akin to taking a vacation, like hanging a sign on your door that says “Gone Fishin’.” It is not the nicest room in the house. We have spent more time and resources on just about every other room. But is a perfectly acceptable room. Nice lighting, good view of the McMansions and the golf course across the street. Comfy bed, just a step away from a full bath. It would make for a great B&B. But perhaps more than any other room in the house, it doesn’t say much about us. And maybe that is why I sometimes choose to nap there.

A nap is not simply catching up on sleep. The parents of any infant or toddler can tell you that. Napping is a transformative activity. It is closer kin to meditation than to actual full on nighttime snoozing. Done properly a nap refreshes the soul, allows a smile to come more easily, paints the world in brighter, happier colors, restores our rose-colored glasses that can easily be knocked askew by the hurly-burly of everyday. 

But we ignore the notion of “done properly” at our peril. “Hurry up and take your nap!” is an invitation to disaster - again consult anyone tasked with the care of young children, or, I now realize, the partner of any truly committed napper. Napping cannot be hurried, and even done properly, is easily disrupted.

One of the primary characteristics that my napping shares with my form of meditation is what I call clearing the screen. Despite my ongoing love affair with words, I am a very visual person.  Closing my eyes has little to do “making it dark.” Rather it simply raises the curtain on my inner world. Inevitably that stage is at least partially populated by the issues and individuals lurking on the other side of my eyelids. Hence the need to clear the screen.

I do this with music. Sleep specialists are probably tearing their hair out - but tough, it is my nap. So I play music - most often classical, exclusively instrumental or sung in a language I do not understand. As the music plays I consciously turn the screen behind my eyelids white. I try to hold that for a bit - but then, little by little I begin to paint the scene. Most often they are tranquil naturescapes, forest glades, seashores, mountains, quiet cabins on placid lakes, meadows streaked with golden sunlight, knee-high grasses waving in a gentle breeze, snow falling through a moonlit clearing. You get the idea. And it is when people stroll into my images and begin to speak that, on some level, I know that I am asleep.

These are very real constructions for me, but they are, unfortunately, at least initially, also very fragile. An unexpected flash of light, the complaining warble of a cellphone, an intrusive TV “therapy” confrontation or gun fight, a car door crashing shut down the street, all can untie the shades of my eyelids and send them, and my heart rate, shooting skyward. And I must begin again.

Which brings me back to why I am napping in the guest room. If my nap is disrupted in normal living space - say the couch by my desk, or even the bedroom - the real world creeps in. If that world is fairly under control then restarting the nap ritual can be a minor irritation. However, too often that brief glimpse is enough to trigger the litany of thoughts that plague daily life. The “to do” list from which there is little escape. Groceries to be bought, lightbulbs to change, cleaning to be picked up, emails to answer; the death by a thousand little cuts that are the true bane of life in the 21st century. You can kiss your nap goodbye.

But if you are napping in the guest room, you open your eyes to a rather bland reality. Paintings hung here because they are B-list images. Photos of someone vaguely familiar, at a young age and in a place you don’t really recognize. Nothing at all that screams you should be up doing something. You can close your eyes, encounter the blank screen, listen to the music and begin again. Maybe a path somewhere between a meadow and a forest. Perhaps there is a stream over there, a gentle rain beginning - yes, that’s good.

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