Sleepless

[luciensteiner]

Dear Anton Pávlovitch,

I'm not writing to you because you are the author of Uncle Vanya or The Cherry Orchard. I'm writing to you because you are a doctor. Surely there is something you can do for me. It is now 5:42 a.m. and I'm up. In all, I must have slept some ninety minutes or less. Probably less. And I can't be expected to sleep anymore even

Comments

[luciensteiner]

There was once a little man in Brazil named Ruy Barbosa. He was basically a diplomat and politician, who died in the early 1920s. He thought of himself as a great intellectual but in reality was a pedantic pain in the ass who used the Portuguese language in such a way that it sounded as the most pompous language on Earth. My father was a voracious reader who had lots of books at his bedside table. But there was only one that never left his bdside table: "The Collected Lectures of Ruy Barbosa". My father said that whenever he had insomnia, he got Ruy Barbosa's book, started reading it, and less than five minutes later he was fast asleep.