"You've just gone to bed. You're in familiar surroundings, nestling inside sheets and blankets that are steeped in your own smells and memories; your head has found that pocket of softness in the middle of your pillow; you're lying on your side, and as you curl your legs up against your stomach, your forehead tilts forward, and the cold side of the pillow cools your face: soon, very soon, you'll fall asleep and, in the darkness that engulfs you, you'll forget everything--everything.
Photo courtesy of Amanda Ruggeri
"You'll forget the...unfinished work...those who've blamed you, those who will blame you, your financial troubles, the rush of time, your loneliness, your shame, your defeats, your wretchedness, your pain, and the catastrophes--in just a few minutes you'll forget them all.
"...Waiting with you in the darkness, or the half-light, are all those ordinary and oh-so-familiar wardrobes, chests of drawers, radiators, tables, trays, chairs, tightly shut curtains, discarded clothes, and cigarette packs--the matches are in the pocket of that jacket, and next to it is your handbag and your watch--all waiting, waiting. ...You are ready.
"You are ready.
"But still you can't sleep."
"If my memory, my powers of imagination, and my bedraggled dreams do not cave in from exhaustion in the course of my long travels, I'll keep on drifting through that gray land between wakefulness and sleep until my eyes light on a place I know...whatever it is, I'll go inside, and after opening every door and searching every room as if the house itself were the lost recesses of my own memory, I'll go into the last room, blow out the candle, stretch out on the bed, and, surrounded by strange and alien objects, fall asleep."
[Text excerpted from Orhan Pamuk's The Black Book. New York: Vintage International Books, 2006, pp.246-250]
[Photo credits: (1) Siena at Night, Amanda Ruggeri; (2) Orhan Pamuk, Innocence of Objects.]
