the peripheral view

sleep deprivation, paper mementos, and poland springs

by Joyce Gao

illustrated by Lucid Clairvoyant IG: @l.u.cid

I know romanticizing sleep deprivation is a little foolish. I am not speaking of just any sleep deprivation; I am speaking of the kind you knowingly bring upon yourself when you are young and carefree, the kind that puts you in a dream-like state, replaying snippets from the previous night. If you have ever had a late night with good company, you know what I am talking about. From delirious schoolwork sessions with friends at 2 a.m. to bringing someone over to spend the night, there is something unique about the interactions you share with others late at night, a uniqueness that warps space and time around it.

If you have experienced this kind of late night, then you know the physical discomfort the next morning that completes the experience. It is your consequence, your humble sacrifice for a good time. I move through those mornings like an animal waking from hibernation: slow, dreary, hollowed out in both mind and body. This is essential—the exhaustion ringing through my bones fuses the cherished memories of the past night into a part of me.

Robert Bly wrote in “Winter Poem,” “I love you in slow, dim-witted ways, / Hardly speaking, one or two words only.” Perhaps sleep deprivation is my dim-witted way of professing love, not during those late-night moments with my friends, but alone in the morning after, quietly squinting on my way to a late breakfast. Perhaps my mind is only slow and hazy because I lost pieces of it the previous night, and I, with my dim-witted love, want to keep the lost pieces there as an excuse to return again and again. In the same way, every wave of exhaustion in the morning carries me back to the previous night, again and again.

**

I have a journal full of pieces of paper that I have collected through the years: a polaroid of people who I no longer talk to, ticket stubs, a letter from a friend, a piece of unused hot pink napkin from a dinner with a beloved high school teacher. Once in a while, I lay them out like debris washed up by the ocean, drying off on the shore of my desk. Running my fingers across the edge of these flimsy pieces of paper—the glossy polaroid, the crisp and curling napkin, the folds of the letter that grow more tender with each read—I remember laughing and drying off the polaroid in a bowling alley, marveling at the pink napkin with my teacher, and opening an envelope to the first letter written in Mandarin...

“The winter twigs now bear tiny cherry blossoms, and I smile, just as I did standing under their orange autumn leaves just months ago.”

—Ellyse Givens, “Bicoastal Being”

“But for now, I’m left alone with the frosty air: winter breathing me in, painting me with its icy touch, lining my eyelashes with glittering snowflakes, laughing as it melts away my mascara.”

—Liza Kolbasov, “Outside the Calendar Squares” 3.19.21

Or maybe it’s just the way you get to the view: planning transportation, buying train tickets, walking to the station, no one to yell at you for getting home too late. It’s the tiny, completely unimportant tasks that make me realize that I am no longer a kid. The sense of being in my twenties—whatever that means— flows over me as the train rumbles over the tracks, through the dark tunnel. It stumbles through the artificial glow of overhead lights...

dictionary of obscure joys or, describing indescribable pleasures

by Mack Ford

Here are some words. Some are fabricated from words in different languages, some are molded from combinations of words long dead, and some are words that already exist to which I have given new meaning. Some are words that were reaching out with tantalizing fingertips, begging to be rescued from dusty dictionaries, and some are words to which I have simply added a bit of pizzazz.

amidantino n. a walk for a little bit with a friend along a path in the woods in contented silence.

French ami, friend + Italian andantino, a little walking. Pronounced “am-ee-dan-tee-noe.” ataraxie n. an understanding of your own infinitesimal smallness that makes you feel more free. Also known as ‘floating rock mentality,’ wherein the realization that we are all simply little creatures living on a meaningless floating rock empowers you to live your life according to your rules alone.

Ancient Greek , equanimity or tranquility

+ free. Pronounced “ah-trax-ee.” buzzy adj. tipsy is to alcohol as buzzy is to weed—inspiring feelings of giggliness or bubbliness, as well as silly thoughts and perhaps craving for a snack.

A play on buzzed, meaning slightly drunk...