The Art of the Nap

This morning, I woke up and promptly decided to do nothing with my day.

I had plans to go to the farmers' market downtown and errands aplenty to run, but after a cup of coffee and two toasted pitas with peanut butter, I hit the couch and haven't moved since--except, of course, to transition back to bed where I could better enjoy the warm breeze coming through my bedroom window, the buttery Saturday morning sunlight, and my comforter (which is just thin enough to be perfect for warm spring-time napping).

I've never been much of a napper (though I have recently developed a fondness for falling asleep on my couch for a half hour each night as an overture to my real bedtime). But I do love a good half-awake, hour-long loll in bed when just I'm conscious enough to hear cars driving by but asleep enough to lose track of which of my thoughts are real and which are the bizarre result of half-dreams ("Why shouldn't the ghosts ride motorcycles to make it to their graduation day history tests?").

Between this morning's naps, I've had the good fortune to spend my time with Joseph Epstein's Narcissus Leaves the Pool: Familiar Essays. I'd never heard of Epstein before, but I saw this book's title on another blogger's list of favorite essay collections, and I had to get it from the library.

Epstein's essays are emphatically "familiar." He writes in the spirit of Michel de Montaigne--his voice is indulgent, leisurely, charming, and desultory, and his topic of choice is always himself. Whereas "personal" essays are usually about some event in the author's life, their form still tends to be somewhat formal and narrative-based. Epstein's "familiar" essays, on the other hand, feel like letters Epstein has written to a dear friend. I imagine that Epstein worries far less about keeping his meanderings on topic than he does about maintaining a relationship with his reader that is warm, relaxed, and consistently engaging.

Joseph Epstein

One of my favorite essays so far has been "The Art of the Nap." In this piece, Epstein starts with his personal napping habits (a topic with an almost unimaginable potential for dullness) before waltzing playfully from the historical connections between writers and insomnia to sleep's purported similarity to death and back around to why it's important not to take Harvard too seriously. He manages, somehow, to transform the potentially banal into the delightful--a brilliant and surprisingly difficult trick.

Here's one of my favorite paragraphs from "The Art of the Nap":

I nap well on airplanes, trains, buses, and in cars and with a special proficiency at concerts and lectures. I am, when pressed, able to nap standing up. In certain select company, I wish I could nap while being spoken to. I have not yet learned to nap while I myself am speaking, though I have felt the urge to do so. I had a friend named Walter B. Scott who, in his late sixties, used to nap at parties of ten or twelve people that he and his wife gave. One would look over and there Walter would be, chin on his chest, lights out, nicely zonked; he might as well have hung a Gone Fishing sign on his chest. Then, half an hour or so later, without remarking upon his recent departure, he would smoothly pick up the current of the talk, not missing a stroke, and get finely back into the flow. I saw him do this perhaps four or five times, always with immense admiration.

Epstein possesses all my favorite traits in an essayist--he's light-hearted, well-read, subtle, intelligent, self-aware, and unfailingly kind--and he's made a lovely addition to my lazy Saturday morning.

Now the question becomes, where do I go from here? A trip to the gym is definitely in order, as well as a trip to Home Depot to look at paint swatches and perhaps a jog over to Old Navy to seek out sundresses. Maybe I'll make my way to the theater to see Bridesmaids tonight. Perhaps I'll find time to deal with the Jenga-like stack of dishes piled in my tiny apartment sink. It's possible that I'll even repair the complete lack of clean white socks in my uppermost sock drawer.

But, then again, there are essays waiting for me, not to mention more sunshine and that already well-rumpled comforter waiting on my bed . . .