Spalding Gray's (First) Perfect Sleep
In Swimming to Cambodia, Spalding Gray talks a lot about his search for the Perfect Moment. It turns out to happen one afternoon swimming off the coast of Phuket, in Thailand, after he wrapped up his shoot for The Killing Fields.
No peaceful moment, this. While the crew is busy eating something with chopsticks (chopsticks? in Thailand?) for lunch, Spalding, a spitting dog-paddler, in dread of sharks, rip currents, the deep, the unseen, the big terrors that pull, swims farther and farther out, losing himself in the sea, losing his self-awareness, the awareness that his 500 bhat are sitting on the sand for anyone to steal: Spalding, belongingless, becoming a part of the organism that is, oh glory, the same temperature as his body...
Becoming happy; losing his terror, it may comfort us to recall, in the water...
Beginning a rapturous drown in the experience...
SPALDING! STOP, MAN!
A friend, whose Perfect Experience, Spalding later notes, would be death, and who has just casually ridden a riptide out to sea and back ("I'm South African!"), jolts him back to awareness, yelling that those waters haven't been tested. Panic! Flailing! Spalding's atavistic grace — that almost prelingual grace — harpooned.
The Moment in question wasn't the swimming, the state of grace, or the risk. It was the making it back to shore and the telling of the tale. That was elation. That was perfect.
"SPALDING. You are lucky to be alive," says Athol Fugard severely, drinking coffee at the bar.
That night Spalding Gray slept a deep and beautiful sleep, dreaming of sand dunes.
Which makes me wonder: Are the sleeps of hikers in Nepal, of rescuers of old women from burning buildings, of those who have come, whether by choice or by accident, close to the Edge and back, the most perfect sleeps?
What, I want to know, were Emily Dickinson's sleeps like? After days spent writing out those poems in her tiny, perfect hand.
What is my Perfect Moment?
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Posted by:John Boland | 18 February 2007 at 17:58
Sleeper--
This is a pretty amazing story-aren't so much of our dreams about processing fears? So then what happens to sleep/dreams when we conquer fears in our waking life? This also sounded like something he'd use in a monologue, if he had explored sleep.
gw
Posted by:Gary Winter | 21 February 2007 at 09:52
There are always more fears to conquer!
Posted by:Nicole | 21 February 2007 at 10:50
Hi Sleeper:
Brilliant, beautiful site. I love the photograph illustrating this post--I want to wrap it around the walls of my bedroom and fall asleep to it.
-k
Posted by:Karyn | 06 March 2007 at 12:57
For Spalding:
A Touch of Gray
To be alone, to hopeless feel
When darkness comes your soul to steal
Those tears fall down but you succumb
For when they stop you just feel numb
You want to run you know not where
Wish you could feel, wish you could care
You've come to this you know not how
Just want to stop this torture now
All colors fade they've gone away
You're left with just a touch of Gray
Posted by:Barb | 12 October 2007 at 00:36