The art of slowly drying out in the middle of the night
I write sleep stories and invent sleep hacks. I’ve learned one lesson in my personal experiments with increasing my natural sleep and working with others who wake in the middle of the night: one needs a plethora of strategies. The trick is to have them on hand, ready to soothe the body and mind without effort.
This sleep hack is probably the weirdest one, so keep your eyes open, if you can.
It appeared to me suddenly during a lazy afternoon when I was contemplating a nap. I saw out my window some cotton clothes drying on the back porch in the sun. The wind gently blew them back and forth. I suddenly closed my eyes, leaned back in my recliner, imagined the clothes up close, slowly moving and drying in the warm breeze. I fell asleep.
As I’ve used this strategy in the middle of the night, I’ve created small variations in my mind: I hang pillow cases on a line, securing them with clothespins. Then I sit back in a lounge chair next to them in the warm sun and watch them dancing as they dry. I think about the soft cloth and breath fresh air. Sometimes I imagine looking at them out the back window and see that it is going to rain. I go out and bring them inside to finish drying on a rack in my house — where, again, I watch them dry.
