The Sleep Blogger
"I dedicate this night of sleep to …"
Sleep is not always the simple act of closing your eyes and falling into an unconscious state. It is many other things. It is a literary device (the famously sleep-deprived Ebenezer Scrooge, for instance), the gateway to dreams, a metaphorical stand-in (“sleeping” as making whoopee), the object of countless scientific undertakings, a source of torment when it becomes elusive, and the endless target of various commercial enterprises.
Now, sleep is also a political statement — at least in Salt Lake City, where a strict camping ordinance prevents people from sleeping in city parks. When homeless people in the Utah capital wanted to register their unhappiness with the ordinance, they cooked up a sleep protest as a novel way to do so. As the Deseret News explains:
The “nap-in” was an act of civil disobedience by about a dozen homeless people in the area who said they are being denied the only place they have to sleep — the ground — because of the city’s camping regulations and because the city’s main overflow emergency shelter has closed for the season.
Think of the endless possibilities that unfold from this. On any given evening, you could declare that your sleep should be seen as an act of protest: “I shall go to sleep tonight as a gesture of solidarity with the oppressed people of East Timor!” Or maybe you announce that your evening’s slumber is a blow for publicly supported universal health care. (Or a blow against it. Your sleep, your choice.)
Protest, or just a nap in a tree?
In fact — hey, the Sleep Blogger’s on a roll here — you could even start alerting the media whenever you stage your sleep protests, and eventually achieve that weirdly lucrative famous-for-being-famous level of celebrity enjoyed by, say, Paris Hilton. Your own reality TV show will almost certainly follow.
Of course, a failed marriage, rehab and public humiliation won’t be far behind. But the good news is, by that point a good night’s sleep will be a simple blessing — instead of a message-laden statement.