They Call it Sleep

You remember the halcyon days of uninterrupted sleep? Some have suggested that in their studies, it was always a fantasy. A guy whose name was Schwerdtner and was prone to asking difficult questions at meetings of the Vienna Society wondered why sleep was necessary, at all. The year was 1907 ... the venue? an office at Begasse 19. I think it was the same evening that he (I've not been able to find out who he was or what happened to him) asked why it is so difficult for people to hold multiple feelings towards the same Other. The question was never really taken up (as far as I've been able to determine) at that ot future meetings of that esteemed society which, at the time, included Adler, Freud and Jung, as well as many others. .......... Maybe Schwerdtner was Playing in the Last Quarter, though I imagine him younger. But I do find that my confreres-in-age seem to generally report (it's such a cheap thrill to split infinitives with abandon!) difficulty sleeping, particularly staying asleep, and seem to develop rather hard and fast judgements about those they meet. Y'think it's hardening of the arteries? or, maybe, just hardening to life's experiences. What did King George the Second say: 'Fool me once, my bad! Confuse me beyond all reason and ... and ... somethin' else applies. I'll get back to you on that.' ........... We/I do seem to get stuck in our/my judgements. This seems to be particularly so in situations where our interactions are limited ... those judgements stick ... don't have opportunity to evolve or flip into a new experience of the other. Context is all and the context I bring to my Others is, perhaps, my historical sense of them. There is a kind of mental inertia that Schwerdtner seems to have wanted to isolate in his question. .......... Can I ever come to accept that my wife's husband isn't all sugar and cream? Can I ever come to accept even long after his death that my Father who came home from WWII something like the Greek's Agamemnon or the Bible's Jepthah a little rougher than his four oh-so-refined children would have preferred? Can I ever come to see the other sides of people who've bitten me online? Can they ever come to see another side of me? .............. Any case, I woke up thinking about Schwerdtner at 3AM .... my Sainted Herr Dokteur Schwerdtner ... vhere are you vhen I need you? und who vere you?