Immobilised

Are we rolling? Yes indeed. Immobilised may be the given theme this week, but happily no lack of traction afflicts the Saturday Blog as it blazes fearlessly into a new decade.

I thought I'd start off by writing about the phenomenon now commonly called 'sleep paralysis'. I don't know if any of you have ever woken up and been momentarily phased by a complete inability to move a muscle. It's happened to me a few times in my life and it can be quite scary.

According to the NHS website, sleep paralysis (an example of parasomnia) is when you cannot move or speak as you are in the process of waking up or falling asleep. This momentary immobilisation occurs because the body is still in sleep mode but the brain is active. The effect can last from a few seconds to some minutes and is often panic-inducing but is in fact quite harmless. It has been linked variously with insomnia, jet lag, narcolepsy, PTSD, hypertension and general anxiety disorder.

Other sources go into somewhat more graphic detail about causes and symptoms. When in sleep mode, our bodies relax and our voluntary muscles are rendered static. This is a mechanism to stop us from injuring ourselves during the dream cycles of REM sleep (effectively preventing individuals from physically acting out their dreams). The phenomenon of sleep paralysis arises if/when the body's transition to or from that REM sleep gets out of synch with the brain, though there is no clear explanation as to why this sometimes happens.

What is known is that during parasomnia episodes the areas of the brain that detect threats are in a heightened state and overly sensitive. Therefore, common to all such events in addition to the sense of being consciously awake but unable to move or speak, there is often a powerful sense of fear and panic. Sleep paralysis episodes are frequently accompanied by hypnagogic experiences, including visual, auditory and sensory hallucinations. These typically fall into three categories - intruder, motor and incubus.

An intruder episode will often feature perceived phenomena such as the sound of doors opening, shuffling footsteps, a shadowy figure or the sense of a threatening presence in the bedroom. My recent ex-wife used to experience this latter sensation quite regularly and would often wake me up screaming her head off once the parasomnia had loosened its grip.

A motor episode (more accurately vestibular-motor) can give one a sense of spinning, falling, flying, floating or undergoing a complete out-of-body experience, a sense of looking down on oneself from above.

Scariest of all is an incubus episode which can manifest itself in any of the following unpleasant ways, sometimes in combination: as a feeling of pressure on the chest, difficulty with breathing, a sense of being smothered, strangled or sexually assaulted by a malevolent being. Quite often the paralysed individual believes he or she is about to die. Such episodes, harmless though they are, can remain haunting memories for years.


Immobilised I - Incubus Sleep Paralysis Reimagined

As I said, I've had a handful of such episodes in my time and they're not nice. The best advice the NHS website can offer is: exercise regularly (but not in the four hours before going to sleep), don't eat, smoke, drink alcohol or caffeine shortly before going to bed and don't sleep on your back. Sorted then!

Taking a random shunt of the theme into a weed-ridden siding, I've long had a fascination for immobilised relics of our mechanical past, especially rusting old aircraft, cars and locomotives. I suppose it's because unlike we more organic creations who don't long outlast the transition from being quick to being dead, old planes and trains once their motors have been shut down for good take a long time to rust and crumble to dust and can look quite poignant - even poetic? - in the process of their heroic degradation. I hope the image below conveys a sense of the beauty of these immobilised mechanical giants. It  relates tangentially to my latest poem and neatly to an audio bonus I've attached for you this week, gentle readers.


Immobilised II - Some Old Engine

Here then, the first Saturday poetry of the dawning decade, fresh from the imaginarium, its title a cheeky paraphrase of Neil Young's Rust Never Sleeps (bless the grumpy old contrarian). I hope you like it...

Dust Never Sleeps
There's a lazy part of me thinks
'let sleeping dust lie'; that by
not over-agitating those motes
but allowing them to softly coat
every domestic surface
like a token powdering of snow,
the air will be somehow freer
of pollutants and cleaner to breathe.

Nonsense, of course.
Not just the tenuous justification;
even the original notion is flawed,
for fugitive dust never sleeps.
It's always in motion,
empowered by the very spinning
and spiralling of the universe.

Too soft to register on the Mohs scale,
this quintessence of hair, lint, skin,
spiders' webs and dreams worn thin
shifts constantly across the boards,
aggregates insidiously under beds
into colonies of dust bunnies,
spumes out of hearths
and car exhaust pipes as soot sprites,
marshalls itself in every corner
where decaying empires crumble
before migrating in plumes
around the earth.

But it doesn't stop there.
Borne upon solar winds
it rides shining on comet tails,
mixes it with the gases of galaxies,
dances along the cosmic highway
to the tune of the Djinn of creation,
truly star dust, on its destined path
to form new worlds over time,
new lands, peoples, homes, hearths,
new lazy domesticities.


Finally, that New Year musical bonus, a YouTube link to what I consider the most utterly brilliant and soulful 'immobilised' song ever committed to vinyl. Click here to listen: Tom Rush - Driving Wheel

Thanks for reading. Shine on, S ;-)