Siestas

I come from Latin America, a place where naps are sacred and a very common activity done around the sixth hour of the day. It’s because of that we call it siesta. I remember my grandfather after lunch, going directly from the table, laying on the couch, never missing a day to rest for about fifteen minutes before going back to his little woodshop. When you are little and full of energy, it’s hard to understand why you would sleep in the middle of the day. But at that time I never needed to wake up with the sunrise. Peeking from the yard, I used to watch him sleep on that paisley patterned couch. It was possible to see it through the entry door. Always guessing his reasons for sleeping at noon: was it because he was from another time? Was it because of his beliefs? Or because of tiredness? Now I know that more than answering any of those questions, napping was one of a statement, a means to maintain control over his life, and to set the speed and quality of his labour.

From my grandfather, I inherited some skills and a dozen woodworking tools. The practice of the nap is the one that I want to add into my daily life this year. After lunch, my nap time is about 24 minutes. Yes, it is right. Twenty four minutes of siesting is my timeframe. I take the liberty to use the inexistent verb to siest, I feel it is more meaningful. It is known that a traditional siesta should take between ten to forty minutes. It is a dreaming exploration activity that can take years to master. It is one of those voyages that you cannot control. Nevertheless, you just need to find your timeframe once and you will be suited for the rest of your life.

As one of our napping masters, Eduardo Galeano once said in one of his stories, on the days that you siest, your day will turn into two mornings and you have the chance to get a second start. Not that the sun will set again, but the electric feeling of seeing the light for the second time is a mystical celebration of being alive.

During this process of siesting you usually have two types of experience. In the most common one, you feel your mind going back and forth, in a motion that resembles waves in a calm nocturnal tide. Everytime that consciousness comes back, there is a sort of question to be answered. Or an image, that for me is usually black and white, that comes from undiscovered places. Nonetheless, we tend to quickly forget it, as soon as we fall back to sleep. Although, it is possible to hold on to it, to keep it for later: like a memory exercise, you need to grip it with all your strength and as soon as you wake up, write it down in your notebook. This first type of siesta is a confusing sensation, where you never really know if you finally entered the dreaming state or if you are still untying the knots of your thoughts.

The second one is more like a free, winding, and curving movement that keeps going forward, through the cloudy valleys of slumber, with no intended destination. It is more dangerous than the previous, because it is very hard to control. You never know when or where it will conclude and it can drag you very far away, easily consuming all the hours of your day. When you wake up, it could already be time for the official, unavoidable, socially-required nighttime sleep and you end up combining both the siesta and bedtime.

In any case, both are in a timeless state. A metaphysical state that, indeed, doesn’t have the rules of the invented fourth dimension. Occasionally, these twenty four minutes are so fast that it feels like two seconds, as if time had stopped at the very moment when my head touched the pillow. In other moments, I can easily believe that I have lost all my youth dreaming of a life that I never had. This returning trip, waking up, requires a few minutes afterwards, only to realize that I have a physical body and my essence has landed back into it.

Siesting is a risky endeavor: you can never predict how you will wake up from a siesta. But if you do it with an open heart, it is certain that this exposure will bring you your most needed gift. For that, my new year’s resolution is to renew the challenge of remembering my dreams, take the inspirations and ideas given by this lethargic state and use it as fuel to make my waking time more vivid. To increase the depth of my decisions and my creations, and bring more clarity to the path ahead of my open eyes.