Tuesday 24 June: Sleep, or the lack thereof

I have never had normal sleep patterns, and in Italy, they’ve only gotten worse. I remember my first night here, when I heard the incessant din of Trastevere continue until after 3 am. My first thought was that I was back on the north side of Youngstown, Ohio, where I went to college. Of course, I was a quarter century younger then, too. I quickly decided that I wouldn’t even try to sleep through it, but just go to bed after it became quiet. This worked, more or less.

As the weather became increasingly hot, I tried to do what the locals do and siesta in the hottest part of the day. The problem was that my apartment lacks even a fan, much less air conditioning, and is just too hot to nap then. So what I’ve been doing is trying to schedule my time so I’m in a comparatively cool place in the afternoon: library, museum, air conditioned caffè, etc. Then, when the late afternoon breezes come through my apartment and the shops start opening, I sometimes take a nap for an hour or so, then get up for dinner. I write during the night while Trastevere parties, since the noise doesn’t bother me. I catch another two or three hours of sleep between 3:30 and 7 am or so.

This has evolved into just sleeping whenever it’s cool enough, quiet enough, and I’m tired enough. These three coincide occasionally, but not necessarily predictably. Since I’m living along and have a little kitchen, it doesn’t really matter when I get up or go to bed. I doubt that I ever get more than five hours of sleep in any twenty-four hour period, though. I don’t even think that I’ll suffer any jet lag when I return to the US, because I don’t have a normal sleep pattern to get disrupted!