Sublime

But Fielding69 lived when the days were longer (for time, like money, is measured by our needs), when summer afternoons were spacious, and the clock ticked slowly in the winter evenings.

Sundials, hourglasses and water clocks already existed in the ancient world, in the Mediterranean region and in China – but they did not play the cruel role that clocks have today in the organization of our lives. It is only in the fourteenth century in Europe that people’s lives start to be regulated by mechanical clocks. Cities and villages build

24/7 is a time of indifference, against which the fragility of human life is increasingly inadequate and within which sleep has no necessity or inevitability. In relation to labor, it renders plausible, even normal, the idea of working without pause, without limits.

hypnagogic

Je l’ai réglé sur 4 heures et quart mais à 4 heures et quart je suis depuis longtemps réveillé, en fait j’ai à peine dormi. Charles de Foucauld, lorsqu’il se réveillait la nuit, peu importe à quelle heure, avait pour principe de se lever et de considérer que la journée était commencée – façon radicale de traiter l’insomnie.

the practice of natural biphasic sleep, and a healthy diet, appear to be the keys to a long-sustained life.

I thought about what Dr. Charles Czeisler had told me back at Harvard Medical School. If we all went back to sleeping as much as our brains and our bodies need, he said, “it would be an earthquake for our economic system, because our economic system has become dependent on sleep-depriving people.