Fringe 3: Insomnia

Had I remained a human rat in a research laboratory, I would have surely developed a keen interest in the relationship between the density of memory (or alternatively the magnitude of 'adulthood') and the propensity for Insomnia. In fact, I do not need Erlenmeyer flasks, ELISA blots, GROMACS simulations or dead mice to come to my pseudo-scientific conclusion: the more you live, the more frequently you encounter that strange disconnect from the (basic?) human need of sleep. It does not matter what the causing agent is, most of them are related to hurt or uncertainty anyway: a lover has dumped you, the fear of losing your claim to social prestige thanks to some absurd occurrence, or why Carotene pastes are not tanning you well enough. On second thought, hurt makes you sleep sometimes, so let's just say uncertainty. It really doesn't matter. What matters is how potent this agent becomes with time. While your body develops immunity to biological viruses, psychological ones only seem to get more devastating with time. They rely on a machiavellic survival technique where they simulate dormancy, giving the body of the victim the illusion that she has become immune and thick-skinned, shielded by the neutrality and indifference of adulthood. In reality, 'indifference of adulthood' is an oxymoron. In fact, the more we mature, the more we perfect our art of being someone else, and the science of denying our vulnerabilities. My alteration of the opening sentence from the French version of 'Der Himmel uber Berlin' that still haunts me would be 'Lorsque l'enfant etait enfant (when the child was a child) he could meet his promised cloud of dreams in 3 minutes'. That child who 'agonized' over his chewing gum which was ruthlessly devoured by the maid, or faced the 'disturbing disappointment' of seeing his TV idol of innocence drunk and happy, or experienced the 'immense trauma' of the paint colour in the Pediatric's clinic, that child did not need more than gentle light and a kiss on the cheek to surrender to peace. His adult version, who barely agonizes over the loss of a massive amount of friends, and who does not get disturbingly disappointed by the sight of his adult idol of innocence doped with religious dogma, and who does not experience any significant trauma from the ugly white walls of corporate offices, that neutral, evolved adult needs less than a minute to surrender to the vengeance of everything he negated...