From the Archive: What It Is to Be Human: Talking with Ottessa Moshfegh
Ottessa Moshfegh discusses her new novel, MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATION.
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Posts Tagged: insomnia
The Dark Mothers’ Club
I know all the hours intimately as any lover, the lucid high of four a.m. as familiar as the adrenaline drunk of noon.
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Searching for Sleeper Trains
There aren’t enough trains in Los Angeles. Not enough for me to sleep.
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Sleeping with Myself
I exist in a field of landmines, never quite sure when one will go off or why.
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FUNNY WOMEN: Sleep Tips by a 90-Year-Old Insomniac
You can take care of it in the morning. Just write yourself a note.
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Body Inheritance
I needed my beauty to be invisible, either accidental or not at all.
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A Year in Rumpus Book Reviews
A look back at the books we’ve reviewed in 2019!
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Doesn’t It Keep You Up at Night?
The dark holds me as long as I will let it.
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Our Own Glimmering Darkness: Insomnia by Marina Benjamin
Sleep seems like a stretch of velvet to which Benjamin is unable to submit.
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Wanted/Need/Loved: Moby’s 30 Rock
It really was art imitating life imitating art imitating life.
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Becoming Bodies
[W]e wanted something different from each other’s bodies than what was actually there, which might be why our bodies sometimes came together.
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Finding Freedom
We never want something more than when it has been taken away from us. The opposite of freedom is confinement.
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As a Matter of Fact
Why show the mundanity of your life when you can make it glitter?
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Swinging Modern Sounds #84: Music for Spaceships
Perhaps space is an inevitable resting place for music of this kind, because time is completely different when conceived of in the vastness of space, and not only because of relativity.
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The Day the FBI Tapped Our Phones
I held an image in my mind of my daughter and me in a small rowboat and I’m rowing, rowing, rowing as hard as I can, away from this sinking ship.
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The Read Along: Neda Semnani
I picked up The Odyssey because I wanted to read about wanders and refugees. A story about a man who takes a decade to get home and is on a quest for safety seemed like a good place to start.
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A Way to Make Sense of the World with Suzanne Buffam
Poet Suzanne Buffam discusses her latest work, A Pillow Book, sleep remedies that don’t work, and the worries that occupy her mind and keep her from sleep.
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The Evergreen Appeal of Bob Ross
This painter’s enduring popularity goes beyond surface-level soothing and pop culture camp. Ross is far more than a happy little frizzy-haired hippy.
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Albums of Our Lives: Frightened Rabbit’s The Midnight Organ Fight
Something about the twangy banjo and the melancholy vocals just made me feel less alone. And I hated being alone.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: No Wound
Maybe I can touch it and show it to you. If I convince you, we can call it real. And then perhaps it will be.
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The Diary of Anaïs Nin While Binge-Watching Broad City
One episode after another with every outrageous twist and turn. I smile but no laughter comes—just a gaping mouth wishing to devour more!
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Sound Takes: Here the Blue River & Rumpus Video Premiere
She takes a simple story and turns it into something the listener can hold in the palm of their hand.
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Keeping Secrets from the Stupid
I was four years old when my mother taught me to lie. There were certain instances, she explained, when lying was acceptable, when it wasn’t even lying, really.
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Albums of Our Lives: Brian Eno’s Ambient 1: Music for Airports
I drifted off and dreamed that Emily and I donned riding hoods and ran through the forest to escape from wolves.
...moreReading Prevents Insomnia
Picking up a book before heading to bed may stave off insomnia. Van Winkle’s reports that researchers have shown just six minutes of reading reduces stress by 68%, clearing the mind in preparation for sleep.
...moreBedtime Reading with Charles Simic
Poet Charles Simic, in a piece on the NYRB blog, shares his quest for the perfect bedtime reading strategy. Simic turns to books to settle his mind for the night, but must be careful with his choices: I read only a passage or two, and at the most a page, because if I read more […]
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The Shield
Television can be better than most things, always.
...moreThe Last Poem I Loved: “Insomnia” by Elizabeth Bishop
It is near the time of my college graduation. I’m graduating early, barely 20 years old. Among my friends, the stuff of my romantic self-sabotage is legendary.
...moreBooks For The Dark Night Of The Soul
In his late thirties, F. Scott Fitzgerald experienced a series of emotional and mental breakdowns, many of which he wrote about in a series of random essays and observations collected under the title, The Crack-Up. At the beginning of the self-titled essay, he writes: “Of course, all of life is a process of breaking down, […]
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