“
Rem: The way to kill a shinigami is to make them fall in love with a human.
Misa: What a wonderful way to kill.
”
”
Tsugumi Ohba (Death Note, Vol. 4: Love (Death Note, #4))
“
Dammit, R.E.M. was right: Every single person on the planet had to take turns hurting. Sometimes all you could do was hold on to each other right until the dark spat you back out.
”
”
Emily Henry (Beach Read)
“
Rem tene, verba sequentur: grasp the subject, and the words will follow. This, I believe, is the opposite of what happens with poetry, which is more a case of verba tene, res sequenter: grasp the words, and the subject will follow.
”
”
Umberto Eco (Postscript to the Name of the Rose)
“
Katy
I always had this plan for the off chance I was around for the end of the world. I’d climb up on my roof top, turn up the radio, blast R.E.M.’s It’s The End of The World, and watch it all go down from my lofty perch.
Except real life rarely turned out that cool.
And it was really happening—it was the end of the world as we knew it, and I sure as hell didn’t feel fine.
Everything had changed and we had been the catalyst for it all.
”
”
Jennifer L. Armentrout (Opposition (Lux, #5))
“
There are books that I own that somehow even without reading them they mean something to me. So I think people have a relationship with books in a library whether you’ve come specifically to read them or not.
”
”
Rem Koolhaas
“
Architecture is a hazardous mixture of omnipotence and impotence. It is by definition a c h a o t i c a d v e n t u r e... In other words, the utopian enterprise.
”
”
Rem Koolhaas (S, M, L, XL)
“
Back in the day, I had this plan for the off chance that I was around for the whole end-of-the-world thing. It involved climbing up on my roof and blasting R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” as loud as humanly possible, but real life rarely turns out that cool.
”
”
Jennifer L. Armentrout (Opposition (Lux, #5))
“
Then get your butt out there and watch them. (Remi)
Nice attitude, Rem. Really, you should see about suing whatever asshole sold it to you. (Aimee)
”
”
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Bad Moon Rising (Dark-Hunter, #18; Were-Hunter, #4; Hellchaser, #2))
“
But now he’s taken up residence in my REM once more. He’s here every time Jeb is gone, keeping me company—even though I don’t ask him to.
Sharing that much of your subconscious with someone, you tend to learn things about him. Sometimes you even develop feelings for him, no matter how you try to fight it.
”
”
A.G. Howard
“
More specifically, the coolheaded ability to regulate our emotions each day—a key to what we call emotional IQ—depends on getting sufficient REM sleep night after night. (If your mind immediately jumped to particular colleagues, friends, and public figures who lack these traits, you may well wonder about how much sleep, especially late-morning REM-rich sleep, they are getting.)
”
”
Matthew Walker (Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams)
“
It's these little things, they can pull you under
Live your life filled with joy and wonder
I always knew this altogether thunder
Was lost in our little lives
”
”
R.E.M Sweetness Follows
“
Find optimism in the inevitable
”
”
Rem Koolhaas
“
De taalvaardigheid van scholieren - ik lach erom. Die heeft nooit bestaan. Scholen zijn niet geschikt om kinderen te leren communiceren. De school is een kerker, een plaag, een rem, een strop, een moordenaarshol.
”
”
Gerrit Komrij
“
Everybody Hurts
When the day is long and the night, the night is yours alone,
When you're sure you've had enough of this life, well hang on
Don't let yourself go, 'cause everybody cries and everybody hurts sometimes
Sometimes everything is wrong. Now it's time to sing along
When your day is night alone, (hold on, hold on)
If you feel like letting go, (hold on)
When you think you've had too much of this life, well hang on
'Cause everybody hurts. Take comfort in your friends
Everybody hurts. Don't throw your hand. Oh, no. Don't throw your hand
If you feel like you're alone, no, no, no, you are not alone
If you're on your own in this life, the days and nights are long,
When you think you've had too much of this life to hang on
Well, everybody hurts sometimes,
Everybody cries. And everybody hurts sometimes
And everybody hurts sometimes. So, hold on, hold on
Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on
Everybody hurts. You are not alone
”
”
R.E.M.
“
The Metropolis strives to reach a mythical point where the world is completely fabricated by man, so that it absolutely coincides with his desires.
”
”
Rem Koolhaas
“
Sleeping Atlantis
Silent cool waters
dancing upon her skin ~
silent cool water
ushering dreams within...
”
”
Muse (Enigmatic Evolution)
“
If less is more, maybe nothing is everything.
”
”
Rem Koolhaas
“
The cosmetic is cosmic.
”
”
Rem Koolhaas (Content)
“
REM sleep has also been shown to be particularly important for enhancing our ability to retain emotional memories and for allowing the hippocampus to turn short-term memories of the day before into long-term ones (i.e., it helps make memories more permanent, leading to structural change in the brain).
”
”
Norman Doidge (The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science)
“
His normal pattern of sleeping was problematic at best. He would fall asleep for an hour and then be jarred awake for absolutely no reason. Falling back asleep wasn’t a problem. All he had to do was read a book or watch TV and he would eventually drift off. But as soon as the next hour of REM clicked by, bang, back awake again. The pattern would repeat and repeat and repeat again until he was tired of the farce and got up and went on with another day of living.
”
”
Brett Arquette (Operation Hail Storm (Hail, #1))
“
The second evolutionary contribution that the REM-sleep dreaming state fuels is creativity. NREM sleep helps transfer and make safe newly learned information into long-term storage sites of the brain. But it is REM sleep that takes these freshly minted memories and begins colliding them with the entire back catalog of your life’s autobiography. These mnemonic collisions during REM sleep spark new creative insights as novel links are forged between unrelated pieces of information. Sleep cycle by sleep cycle, REM sleep helps construct vast associative networks of information within the brain. REM sleep can even take a step back, so to speak, and divine overarching insights and gist: something akin to general knowledge—that is, what a collection of information means as a whole, not just an inert back catalogue of facts. We can awake the next morning with new solutions to previously intractable problems
”
”
Matthew Walker (Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams)
“
I can see the scene down in Mission Control right now: a man in a white shirt and black tie checking my vitals on a readout, his chief inquiring if I’ve hit REM sleep yet. “Affirmative, sir. Sleeping like a baby.” “Excellent. Queue up the machine that goes bing!
”
”
Hugh Howey (Beacon 23)
“
Concentrations of a key stress-related chemical called noradrenaline are completely shut off within your brain when you enter this dreaming sleep state. In fact, REM sleep is the only time during the twenty-four-hour period when your brain is completely devoid of this anxiety-triggering molecule.
”
”
Matthew Walker (Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams)
“
To actually make you believe that your problems were spiritual and mental but absolutely not boozical. Good Christ, just the alcohol-related loss of the REM sleep was enough to screw you up righteously, but somehow you never thought of that while you were active. Booze turned your thought-processes into something akin to that circus routine where all the clowns come piling out of the little car.
”
”
Stephen King (Wolves of the Calla (The Dark Tower, #5))
“
They only worshiped seven gods in the Tholosian Empire: Letum, Bel, Rem, Salutem, Phobos, Algea, and Soter. Death, War, Honor, Survival, Fear, Agony, and Salvation. There was no place in their pantheon for Mercy.
”
”
Elizabeth May (Seven Devils (Seven Devils, #1))
“
I wish I could concentrate on dancing
Instead of spending so much time pretending
I am still in junior high
But with Rem, I want to be sixteen
Or, like Alice in Wonderland,
Sometimes smaller,
Sometimes bigger still.
”
”
Stasia Ward Kehoe (Audition)
“
Back in the day, I had this plan for the off chance that I was around for the whole end-of-the-world business. It involved climbing up on my roof and blasting R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine),” but real life never turns out that cool.
It was happening—everything about the world as we knew it was ending, and it sure as hell did not feel fine.
Opening my eyes, I inched back the flimsy white curtain. I peered outside, beyond the porch and the cleared yard, into the thick woods surrounding the cabin Luc had stashed in the forests of Coeur d’Alene, a city in Idaho I couldn’t even begin to pronounce or spell.
”
”
Jennifer L. Armentrout (Opposition (Lux, #5))
“
Rem tene, verba sequentur: grasp the subject, and the words will follow. This, I believe, is the opposite of what happens with poetry, which is more a case of verba tene, res sequentur. grasp the words, and the subject will follow.
”
”
Umberto Eco (The Name of the Rose)
“
Sometimes I wonder if I've changed so much, my wife is even gonna recognize me whenever it is I get back to her, and how I'll ever be able to, tell about days like today. Ahh, Ryan. I don't know anything about Ryan, I don't care. The man means nothing to me; he's just a name. But if, you know, if going to Rem"al, and finding him so he can go home, if that earns me the right to get back to my wife, well then, then that's my mission.
”
”
Max Allan Collins
“
A curiosity: my name, Rem, will someday come to mean a line of text in a language spoken only by machines. Specifically, it will mean a line that the machines can safely ignore--one that's only there as a mnemonic, a placeholder, for the people who give the machines their orders. A REM line might say something like "this bit is a self-contained sub loop" or "Steve Perlman in Marketing is a shit." The program as a whole rolls on past and around the REM lines, ignores them completely as it takes its shape, moves through its pre-ordained sequences, unfolds its wonders. My mother named me well.
”
”
Louise Carey (The Steel Seraglio)
“
Dreams are associated with a state called REM sleep, the abbreviation standing for rapid eye movement. The REM state is strongly correlated with sexual arousal. Experiments have been performed in which sleeping subjects are awakened whenever REM state emerges, while members of a control group are awakened just as often each night but not when they're dreaming. After some days, the control group is a little groggy, but the experimental group - the ones who are prevented from dreaming - is hallucinating in daytime. It's not that a few people with a particular abnormality can be made to hallucinate in this way; anyone is capable of hallucinations.
”
”
Carl Sagan (The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark)
“
In a laughing mirror-image of the seriousness with which the rest of the world is obsessed with Progress, Coney Island attacks the problem of Pleasure, often with the same technological means.
”
”
Rem Koolhaas (Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan)
“
I never sleep. Like the dolphin and the spiny anteater, I don't experience REM. Unlike the dreamless mammals, I'm a construct. I am a living program inside a vast network of electronic impulses known as the LINK. In that datastream I've uncovered the meaning of another kind of dreaming--that of a fond hope or aspiration, a yearning, a desire, or a passion. This much I have. When I dream, I dream of Mecca.
”
”
Lyda Morehouse (Fallen Host (LINK Angel, #2))
“
We try to recover one (NREM) a little sooner than the other (REM), but make no mistake, the brain will attempt to recoup both, trying to salvage some of the losses incurred. It is important to note, however, that regardless of the amount of recovery opportunity, the brain never comes close to getting back all the sleep it has lost. This is true for total sleep time, just as it is for NREM sleep and for REM sleep. That humans (and all other species) can never “sleep back” that which we have previously lost is one of the most important take-homes of this book, the saddening consequences of which I will describe in chapters 7 and 8.
”
”
Matthew Walker (Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams)
“
Q: Assume everything about your musical tastes was reversed overnight. Everything you once loved, you now hate; everything you once hated, you now love. For example, if your favorite band has always been R.E.M., they will suddenly sound awful to you; they will become the band you dislike the most. By the same token, if you’ve never been remotely interested in the work of Yes and Jethro Tull, those two groups will instantly seem fascinating. If you generally dislike jazz today, you’ll generally like jazz tomorrow. If you currently consider the first album by Veruca Salt to be slightly above average, you will abruptly find it to be slightly below average. Everything will become its opposite, but everything will remain in balance (and the rest of your personality will remain unchanged). So—in all likelihood—you won’t love music any less (or any more) than you do right now. There will still be artists you love and who make you happy; they will merely be all the artists you currently find unlistenable. Now, I concede that this transformation would make you unhappy. But explain why.
”
”
Chuck Klosterman (Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas)
“
postremo pereunt imbres, ubi eos pater aether
in gremium matris terrai praecipitavit;
at nitidae surgunt fruges ramique virescunt
arboribus, crescunt ipsae fetuque gravantur.
hinc alitur porro nostrum genus atque ferarum,
hinc laetas urbes pueris florere videmus
frondiferasque novis avibus canere undique silvas,
hinc fessae pecudes pinguis per pabula laeta
corpora deponunt et candens lacteus umor
uberibus manat distentis, hinc nova proles
artubus infirmis teneras lasciva per herbas
ludit lacte mero mentes perculsa novellas.
haud igitur penitus pereunt quaecumque videntur,
quando alit ex alio reficit natura nec ullam
rem gigni patitur nisi morte adiuta aliena.
”
”
Lucretius (De Rerum Natura: Bks. 1-6 (Loeb Classical Library))
“
With the idea that a single creator can build a society wherein a huge number of people will live, Le Corbusier later approached Stalin. In India, he charmed a powerful provincial family and ended up making huge, sculptural relics in Chandigarh.
”
”
Masato Otaka
“
When I think of this trip, I see David and me in the front seat of the car. It’s nighttime. It smells like chewing tobacco, soda, and smoke. (The smell of chewing tobacco is like a muddy lawn you’ve just fed a truckful of cough drops to.) The window is letting in a leak of cold air. R.E.M. is playing. The wheels are making their slightly sleepy sound of tape being stripped cleanly and endlessly off a long wall. On the other hand, we seem not to be moving at all, and the conversation is the best one I’ve ever had.
”
”
David Lipsky (Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace)
“
He pointed to another number, changing as rapidly as the first, but on a lower trajectory; it rose to a high of 8.79 rem per hour. Several lifetimes of dentists’ X-rays, to be sure; but the radiation outside the storm shelter would have been a lethal dose, so they were getting off lightly. Still, the amount flying through the rest of the ship! Billions of particles were penetrating the ship and colliding with the atoms of water and metal they were huddled behind; hundreds of millions were flying between these atoms and then through the atoms of their bodies, touching nothing, as if they were no more than ghosts. Still, thousands were striking atoms of flesh and bone. Most of those collisions were harmless; but in all those thousands, there were in all probability one or two (or three?) in which a chromosome strand was taking a hit, and kinking in the wrong way: and there it was. Tumor initiation, begun with just that typo in the book of the self. And years later, unless the victim's DNA luckily repaired itself, the tumor promotion that was a more or less unavoidable part of living would have its effect, and there would appear a bloom of Something Else inside: cancer. Leukemia, most likely; and, most likely, death.
”
”
Kim Stanley Robinson (Red Mars (Mars Trilogy, #1))
“
R.E.M. was right: Every single person on the planet had to take turns hurting. Sometimes all you could do was hold on to each other tight until the dark spat you back out.
”
”
Emily Henry (Beach Read)
“
Napping is sleep, too. In a series of experiments over the past decade, Sara Mednick of the University of California, San Diego, has found that naps of an hour to an hour and half often contain slow-wave deep sleep and REM. People who study in the morning—whether it’s words or pattern recognition games, straight retention or comprehension of deeper structure—do about 30 percent better on an evening test if they’ve had an hour-long nap than if they haven’t. “It’s changed the way I work, doing these studies,” Mednick told me. “It’s changed the way I live. With naps of an hour to an hour and half, we’ve found in some experiments that you get close to the same benefits in learning consolidation that you would from a full eighthour night’s sleep.
”
”
Benedict Carey (How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens)
“
Neurons on the two ends of the log-normal distribution of activity organize themselves differently. Fast-firing neurons are better connected with each other and burst more than slow-firing neurons. The more strongly connected faster firing neurons form a “rich club” with better access to the entire neuronal population, share such information among themselves, and, therefore, generalize across situations. In contrast, slow firing neurons keep their independent solitude and elevate their activity only in unique situations. The two tails of the distribution are maintained by a homeostatic process during non-REM sleep. The emerging picture is that a simple measure, such as the baseline firing frequency, can reveal a lot about a neuron’s role in computation and its wiring properties. The
”
”
György Buzsáki (The ^ABrain from Inside Out)
“
Architecture is a fuzzy amalgamation of ancient knowledge and contemporary practice, an awkward way to look at the world and an inadequate medium to operate on it. Any architectural project takes five years; no single enterprise—ambition, intention, need—remains unchanged in the contemporary maelstrom. Architecture is too slow. Yes, the word "architecture" is still pronounced with certain reverence (outside the profession). It embodies the lingering hope—or the vague memory of a hope—that shape, form, coherence could be imposed on the violent surf of information that washes over us daily. Maybe, architecture doesn't have to be stupid after all. Liberated from the obligation to construct, it can become a way of thinking about anything—a discipline that represents relationships, proportions, connections, effects, the diagram of everything.
”
”
Rem Koolhaas (Content)
“
The noise from outside is now almost unbearable; neighbours in the street are waking up in their beds. Paul stirs once more. He is now out of the REM sleep stage and is in the next stage of waking up. His conscious mind is aware of the external environment and he is now awake enough to work out what the noise is: it’s a car alarm; the same one that goes off every time a strong enough wind current passes it, triggering its ultra-sensitive setting. Paul curses the car alarm for waking him up out of his slumber. For all the noise they create, he wonders if there is any point to car alarms. Thieves intentionally trip them to mask the sound of breaking glass and can disable them in seconds, and alarms go off so often these days that most people ignore them when they hear them, assuming the owner has accidentally triggered the alarm and will switch it off any second; in reality the owner is normally the last one to realise it is, in fact, their car alarm that is going off annoying everyone, so what is really the point of them?
”
”
Ross Lennon (The Long Weekend)
“
Octopuses and their relatives have what Woods Hole researcher Roger Hanlon calls electric skin. For its color palette, the octopus uses three layers of three different types of cells near the skin’s surface—all controlled in different ways. The deepest layer, containing the white leucophores, passively reflects background light. This process appears to involve no muscles or nerves. The middle layer contains the tiny iridophores, each 100 microns across. These also reflect light, including polarized light (which humans can’t see, but a number of octopuses’ predators, including birds, do). The iridophores create an array of glittering greens, blues, golds, and pinks. Some of these little organs seem to be passive, but other iridophores appear to be controlled by the nervous system. They are associated with the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, the first neurotransmitter to be identified in any animal. Acetylcholine helps with contraction of muscles; in humans, it is also important in memory, learning, and REM sleep. In octopuses, more of it “turns on” the greens and blues; less creates pinks and golds. The topmost layer of the octopus’s skin contains chromatophores, tiny sacks of yellow, red, brown, and black pigment, each in an elastic container that can be opened or closed to reveal more or less color. Camouflaging the eye alone—with a variety of patterns including a bar, a bandit’s mask, and a starburst pattern—can involve as many as 5 million chromatophores. Each chromatophore is regulated via an array of nerves and muscles, all under the octopus’s voluntary control.
”
”
Sy Montgomery (The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness)
“
I què em caldria fer?
Procurar-me un patró molt poderós, Le Bret,
i, com una heura obscura que puja una paret,
grimpar amb enganys, i a més, llepar-li les rajoles,
veient que m'han clavat a la terra les soles?
No, senyor!, que un banquer m'estimi per pallasso
llepaculs que dedica sonets? No!, passo, passo!
Afalagar, adular les passes d’un ministre
per si m'adreça un gest que no sigui sinistre?
No senyor! Empassar-me per esmorzar un gripau?
Tenir el ventre gastat d'arrossegar-me al cau?
I la pell dels genolls de nit i dia bruta?
Ordenar a l'espinada que doblegui la ruta?
No, senyor! Ser una estora als peus d’un idiota?
Agitar l'encenser davant d'una carota?
No, senyor! O saltar de faldilla en faldilla?
O ser un gran homenet enmig d'una quadrilla?
Potser passar la mar amb madrigals per rem
i a la vela sospirs de vella? No fotem!
No, senyor! Potser anar fins a can Seyrecet
fer-me editar els versos, a quin preu? No, Le Bret!
O fer-me elegir Papa en els pobres concilis
formats per uns imbècils que van destil·lant bilis?
No, senyor! Treballar perquè aplaudeixin altres
un sonet que hagi fet, en lloc d'escriure’n d’altres?
Trobar belles orelles de ruc, llargues i tristes?
O viure amb l'objectiu de sortir a les revistes?
Estar terroritzat com un que quasi es mor
quan va veure el seu nom escrit al Mercure d'or?
Calcular, esporuguit davant d'un anatema?
Anar a fer una visita en comptes d’un poema?
Relligar els aprovats o fer-me presentar?
No, senyor! No, senyor!... Més m’estimo cantar,
entrar, sortir, ballar, ser sol, sentir-me viure,
mirar amb el cap ben alt, parlar fort, i ser lliure;
anar amb el barret tort, contemplar l'univers,
per un sí o per un no, barallar-me... o fer un vers!
No tenir gens en compte la fama i la fortuna,
poder, amb el pensament, enfilar-me a la lluna!
No haver d'escriure un mot si de mi no ha sortit,
i molt modestament poder-me dir: Petit,
estigues satisfet de flors i fruits i fulles
si és al teu jardí que en culls o bé n’esbulles!
I si arriba el triomf, quan l'atzar ho ha dispost,
no haver d'estar obligat a satisfer un impost,
davant de mi mateix reconèixer-me els mèrits,
no haver de pagar mai per uns favors pretèrits,
i, encara que no sigui poderós el meu vol,
que no arribi gens lluny, saber que hi he anat sol!
Acte segon. Escena VIII.
”
”
Edmond Rostand (Cyrano de Bergerac)
“
Amsterdam, vanmorgen vroeg.
Het duurde lang voor een stoplicht op groen sprong. In mijn achteruitkijkspiegel
zag ik Samarinde zitten achter het stuur van haar stokoude BMW. Ze zwaaide naar me. Onze karavaan was op weg naar Schiphol en hier stonden we aan het einde van de nacht in een verlaten landschap te wachten tot we verder mochten trekken. Zonder dat daar aanleiding voor was trapte ik mijn rempedaal in, terwijl ik in mijn spiegel bleef kijken. In de rode gloed werd Samarinde nog mooier. Ik liet het pedaal los en de gloed verdween. Weer trapte ik de rem in. Een warme glans op Samarindes witte tanden. Haar glimlach vaag als het schilderij Extase van Mathijs Maris. Er is een Japanse uitdrukking die mukushoh heet, lachen met de ogen (heeft Samarinde me verteld). Samarinde mukushohde naar mij.
Naast Samarinde zat Meija, die zich even vooroverboog om iets uit het dashboard te pakken. Ook zij kwam in mijn fantasmagorische gloed te zitten. Meija lachte naar me, niet met haar modellenlach, maar puur en oprecht. Ik dacht: in remlicht is ieder meisje mooi. En daarna dacht ik, van mijn hand een vuist makend: wat een geweldige openingszin voor een roman die ik waarschijnlijk nooit zal schrijven.
”
”
Ronald Giphart
“
including thousands of paintings in his unique, semi-cartoonish style, often densely packed with animals and figures—Elvis, George Washington, angels—and set fancifully in apocalyptic landscapes. In short order, he was appearing on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show and creating album covers for R.E.M. and Talking Heads. Upon entry to the garden, I was greeted by a giant self-portrait of a smirking Finster in a burgundy suit, affixed to a cinderblock wall. At the bottom are the words “I began painting pictures in Jan-1976—without any training. This is my painting. A person don’t know what he can do unless he tryes. Trying things is the answer to find your talent.
”
”
David Epstein (Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World)
“
My sleep cycle is a bit more elaborate. The seven stages of sleep (according to my body) STAGE 1: You take the maximum dose of sleeping pills, but they don’t work at all and then you glare at their smug bottles at three a.m., whispering, “You lying bastards.” STAGE 2: You fall asleep for eight minutes and you have that dream where you’ve missed a semester of classes and don’t know where you’re supposed to be and when you wake up you realize that even in sleep you’re fucking your life up. STAGE 3: You close your eyes for just a minute but never lose consciousness and then you open your eyes and realize it’s been hours since you closed your eyes and you feel like you’ve lost time and were probably abducted by aliens. STAGE 4: This is the sleep that you miss because you’re too busy looking up “Symptoms of Alien Abduction” on your phone. STAGE 5: This is the deep REM sleep that recharges you completely and doesn’t actually exist but is made up by other people to taunt you. STAGE 6: You hover in a state of half sleep when you’re trying to stay under but someone is touching your nose and you think it’s a dream but now someone is touching your mouth and you open your eyes and your cat’s face is an inch from yours and he’s like, “BOOP. I got your nose.” STAGE 7: You finally fall into the deep sleep you desperately need. Sadly, this sleep only comes after you’re supposed to be awake, and you feel guilty about getting it because you should have been up hours ago but you’ve been up all night and now your arms are missing.
”
”
Jenny Lawson (Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things)
“
I made an appointment with a sleep doctor, who explained that during the sleep study people would be watching me sleep and monitoring my brain waves to see how I reacted during the four stages of sleep. I'd explain those stages if I could spell all the complicated words but they basically range from "Wide awake" to "Just barely not dead."
My sleep cycle is a bit more elaborate.
The seven stages of sleep (according to my body)
STAGE 1: You take the maximum dose of sleeping pills, but they don't work at all and then you glare at their smug bottles at three a.m., whispering, "You lying bastards."
STAGE 2: You fall asleep for eight minutes and you have that dream where you've missed a semester of classes and don't know where you're supposed to be and when you wake up you realize that even in your sleep you're fucking your life up.
STAGE 3: You close your eyes for just a minute but never lose consciousness and then you open your eyes and realize it's been hours since you closed your eyes and you feel like you've lost time and were probably abducted by aliens.
STAGE 4: This is the sleep that you miss because you're too busy looking up "Symptoms of Alien Abduction" on your phone.
STAGE 5: This is the deep REM sleep that recharges you completely and doesn't actually exist but is made up by other people to taunt you.
STAGE 6: You hover in a state of half sleep when you're trying to stay under but someone is touching your nose and you think it's a dream but now someone is touching your mouth and you open your eyes and your cat's face is an inch from yours and he's like, "BOOP. I got your nose."
STAGE 7: You finally fall into the deep sleep you desperately need. Sadly, this sleep only comes after you're suppose to be awake, and you feel guilty about getting it because you should have been up hours ago but you've been up all night and now your arms are missing.
I suspected that the only stage of sleep I'd have during the sleep study would be the sleep you don't get because strangers are watching you.
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Jenny Lawson (Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things)