ManicDDaily

My Attempt at Drawing Forlorn Pakistani Woman. (Sorry it's so sentimental.)

At a bit of a loss for a blog today.  Part of the problem is simple brain fatigue.  For all of the manic person’s mockery of sleep, for all of the insistence that we absolutely must  extend our waking time to fit in all we think we need to do, for all of our resulting delight in staying up into the wee hours, being blissfully (in the end) nonproductive, the body, which, by the way, also contains the mind, has a very definitive answer:  Duh.

Inadequate sleep combined with frantic days leads to mental muzziness—the electric currents just can’t make the synaptic leaps; they get their little electrical feet wet, slow down, trip, short circuit.

I compound this muzziness with some darker-than-usual-reading.  Lately, I can hardly stand dark reading;  still I make myself start, on the subway, In other Rooms, Other Wonders, a National Book Award Finalist book of linked  stories by Daniyal Mueenuddin which take place in Western Pakistan.  I intersperse these with Jane Brody’s article (published today in the New York Times) about the recent death of her husband.

I’ve not yet finished the Mueenuddin stories, but at least one common thread already stands out–each story describes a palpably feudal culture in which both a serving class, and women (women especially), lead lives hinged upon the favor of a dominant man.   The man is the source of protection, livelihood,  survival; his death, downfall, disfavor will quickly bring down the lives of these dependents.

The stories are not sensational, or even particularly dramatic; it’s their matter-of-factness, their verisimilitude, which makes them so painful.

We are relatively immune from this kind of dependence in many parts of the West.  Of course, there are situations of dependence, but women have possibilities of their own; can have some kind of independent life, can be the dominant character for themselves and others.

And then I read Jane Brody’s article about her husband’s diagnosis and death from cancer all in a matter of weeks, reminding me forcefully that even here (with both our greater feeling of control and de facto control), we’re very subject to the vicissitudes of life.  Although perhaps we are not quite as subject to the vicissitudes of other people’s lives, the prospect of sudden loss is still ever present.   (Sorry.)

As I read, I tell myself to be happy that I’m tired, overworked, brain-fatigued, and maybe, just maybe, to even get some more sleep.