January 26, 2010 Lit Writ

Lit Writ

Sound Diary No. 08

by Zoe Ritts

GRAPHIC VIVIEN LEUNG

Sleep has never come easily to me. It is a fickle, unattainable thing that I so desire but don’t naturally get much of.

When I was a child, I would, over the course of a night, travel from my own bed to my brother’s, then crawl up between my parents, and occasionally end in a fort fashioned from mismatched pillowcases and sheets in the bottom of the linen closet.

I take a long time to fall asleep, even now, because my mind takes a long time to shut down, whirring away long after I’d like it to.

The first sounds I hear when I get into bed are those that are loudest and most distant. The worrisome whine of an ambulance siren, at first far, then fast approaching before fading again. Or, the hiccuping beeps of an obese midnight garbage truck making stops in the narrow alley behind my apartment.

The closer to sleep I become, the closer the sounds I notice actually are. The next set of sounds are within the walls of my building. The girls who live above me, about five of them, seem to run up and down their groaning staircase for fun. Their footsteps are a thunderous roll descending from above. They have a piano up there—frightening considering how steep and narrow their only entryway is—and sometimes orphan bars of music drift down to me.
From down the hall in my own apartment I hear my night-owl roommate eat with clinking fork and knife from our second-hand china plates, or put forgotten mugs of coffee back into the microwave. It’s she who often forgets to turn off the light that manages to shine, somehow, into my room, so sometimes I stumble half blind out of bed to turn it off. This activity postpones sleep a little bit more. From the other end of the hall my second roommate laughs and talks on the phone. Her voice rises and falls silent for minutes at a time, and I’m pulled back to consciousness when she exclaims.

Once they’ve gone to bed, I’m alone with the most intimate of sounds. I rustle in my soft bed sheets. My cat, now a fragile 14 years old, snores softly beside me. It is too adorable to mind. I might hear the muffled throb of my own heartbeat if I’m lying with one ear deep in a pillow. Finally, the closest to silence I know at night—a barely existent ringing. It’s either Tinnitus, or silence.

All the while my mind has been running. Each outside sound is an interruption, a hurdle followed by a distracting thought, idea, or a fragment of a song from within my own head. I have my very own iPod in my imagination, though large portions of songs are often missing. I can also hear, with perfect clarity, the voices of people I haven’t seen in years.

Sleep is near. Just when I am tired enough to lie beneath all of these sounds, the old radiator in my bedroom will suddenly BANG, and a flash of white passes over my eyes. Then, hopefully, finally, sleep.

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