I spent last night at the sleep clinic, a dozen wires running from my head to an instrument panel. I didn't sleep well. But maybe the test will reveal why I don't sleep well, and I can shake this tired-all-the-time feeling at last.

The Sleepwell Diagnostic Center is located in a standard, run-of-the-mill cheap hotel near Clackamas Town Center. The lab occupies a section of the topmost floor. There are six subject evaluation rooms, a reception area, a physician's office, and a lab tech room.

I'm greeted promptly by a lab tech who introduces herself as Chastity. (I've never met anyone named Chastity before; it's one of those names I believe parents bestow in a fit of wishful thinking, a name that probably dooms the recipient to a lifetime of lousy jokes from men like my father.)

Chastity shows me to my room. It's a standard, run-of-the-mill cheap hotel room: comfortable, but non-descript. A trainee tags along, observing the whole procedure. Chastity runs through her spiel. As she's talking, I try to envision myself in her shoes, and it seems to me that this spiel is like those I've given as a salesman, a tour guide, or a waiter. She knows it by heart. I interrupt the spiel to mention that I've been taking melatonin, and it throws her a bit — it interrupts her rhythm.

Chastity leaves the room. I change into my PJs then hop into bed. The first thing I do is pop open my iBook to check for a wireless signal. Drat! There isn't any. I decide the room is too light, so I get up to close the curtains. They won't close. They're physically made not to move. I go to the bathroom for a glass of water. (I always sleep with water by my side.) There are no glasses, and no plastic cups. There are styrofoam cups, however, which for some reason I find mildly amusing.

I come back to bed and write this all down.

I note that there's a ficas tree in the corner. A huge ficas tree. It's over seven feet tall, but it's fake, embedded in a chunk of concrete to keep from tipping.

I look at all of the technical equipment in the room.

A small closed-circuit camera is mounted to the ceiling. ("The camera has a built-in microphone," Chastity explains later. "If you need anything during the night, just speak to me. I'll hear you through the camera and be here in a minute or two.")

There's a variety of long wires hanging from the door.

At my bedside is a monitoring device (the Embla N7000!) with a section vaguely shaped like a head. The monitoring device contains many holes with labels like LOC, Fp1, X1, ROC, etc. There's also a CPAP machine.

I lie in bed reading John Irving for maybe an hour (I can't be sure — there are no clocks in the room) before Chastity returns with her trainee. The trainee walks to the window and closes the blind. (HOW?!?)

Chastity has me sit on the edge of the bed. She shows me the CPAP mask and asks me to use it for five minutes, just to get desensitized to it. "It may feel like drowning at first," she says. It doesn't. It is strange, though — strangely exhilarating. I feel like I'm breathing much more deeply than normal.

"This is a split study," says Chastity. "If during your first two hours of sleep you experience forty respiratory events, then I will come in and apply the CPAP machine. Then we'll spend the rest of the night adjusting the air pressure, finding what is right for you." She doesn't explain what will happen if I don't have forty respiratory events.

They hook me up, Chastity explaining the procedure in detail to both me and her trainee.

She tapes an electrode to each of my legs. She tapes one under my left arm, one to my right breast. The sticks an electrode to my neck. She tapes an electrode to my forehead, one beside each eye. She puts two on my chin. She uses gummy paste stuff to stick an electrode on the top of my head. She affixes two more at the base of my skull, and two above my ears. She attaches two final electrodes behind my ears, on top of bone. (These, she explains, are reference leads. Bone doesn't conduct electricity.) Finally, Chastity has me wear a nose-tube thing (which she calls by its correct name, which I have forgotten).

When all the electrodes are stuck to my body, and their leads plugged into the Embla N7000, Chastity asks me to lie in bed. She turns out the lights. She returns to her control room, from which she talks to me over an intercom, asking me to go through a series of exercises, from which she will derive baseline readings.

At last, she bids me good night.

It takes me a long time to fall asleep. How long? Who knows — there are no clocks in the room. I lie there, electrodes stuck to my body, trying to relax, trying to drift off. I realize that I have forgotten to take my melatonin. (The melatonin helps with my inability to fall asleep.) I do math problems in my head. I visualize the entirety of Star Wars from start-to-finish. I recite Proust to myself. ("When I was young, I used to go to bed early.") Nothing works.

Eventually I ease into a vague sort of slumber, only to awaken shortly thereafter. How long after? Who knows — there are no clocks in the room. Again and again throughout the night, I have trouble drifting off, then sleep lightly, waking for several minutes at a time.

I long for a drink of water. The cup I've filled is just there, at the other edge of the bed. I can see it, but I cannot reach it. The cords and cables attached to my head and body are too too short. I lie there, parched.

I feel as if I'm in some strange episode of Star Trek, held captive in a room without time by a curious omnipotent alien being.

I'm awakened in the morning by a knock at the door. Chastity comes in to remove the electrodes. What time is it? Who can tell — there are no clocks in the room. I take a quick shower to remove all the gunk from my face and hair. I get dressed. I fill out the final paperwork: describe the quality of your sleep last night, did you dream?, how long did it take you to fall asleep?, what time did you wake up? Who knows — there are no clocks in the room.

I'm exhausted. I do not feel well-rested. It's just like any other morning.

I never did get to wear the CPAP machine. I must not have had forty respiratory events. (I also didn't get a chance to take any photographs of the process, which I had hoped to do. Things just happened too fast.)

When I get to the car, I see that it's not even six yet. Driving home, I'm startled to see an unlikely pair of animals sitting together on the sidewalk: an orange-and-white cat and a charcoal grey rabbit. They're sitting side-by-side, watching the sparse Sunday morning traffic pass them by.

Closer to home, there's been some sort of squirrel catastrophe. There are four flattened furry squirrel bodies along Oak Grove Boulevard. At one of the corpses, three crows have gathered to feast. I'm convinced that the crow/squirrel relationship we see here at home is perverted: the crows are only protecting the squirrels from the cats in order that the squirrels might grow plump and juicy — good eating down the road.

At home, I find Kris asleep in bed, surrounded by cats. I join my family and doze for three more hours.

On this day at foldedspace.org

2004 — City of God   We watched City of God tonight. For some reason it reminded me of something I saw earlier this week: a driver arguing with his passenger — in sign language!

2003 — Great Science Fiction Novels   Science fiction is my favorite genre. (And when I say science fiction, I also mean fantasy, though fantasy writing is almost always worse than science fiction writing.) If I were to list my ten favorite books, most of them would be science fiction.

2002 — 'Tis   If you read and enjoyed Angela's Ashes you will likely also enjoy 'Tis. Give it a chance, be patient with the first hundred pages.