at any given moment my bed contains, beside myself:

• three long tubular pillows, collective name 'worms', individual names Michael, Michael and Michael. priceless for arranging myself - knees, back, et cetera - when nothing quite fits and something aches, and also for sitting up in bed and reading. why Michaels, nobody knows.
• the plush elephant-shaped pillow (a birthday gift) named Vasissualy, for when the normal pillow doesn't quite cut it.
• the carved wooden ball that fits into my palm, named Ernie. it's carved to resemble a scrunched-up armadillo, and its function is between a massage tool and a plush toy to cuddle when i sleep.
• two sketchbooks and about a hundred of liners and markers in varying stages of decay.
• the keyboard and tablet pseudo-laptop combo i write this entry on.
• the horrendously tacky plush comforter in leopard colors that my parents gave me about a decade ago that i dragged with me to another country, because the texture and the weight is just perfect, and the normal blanket is sometimes too hot and sometimes not hot enough and needs a boost.
• the weighted blanket.
• the cat.
• the other cat.
• the dog.
• occasionally, kittens or a stray hedgehog or whoever else my son drags in for rescue.
• some bit of cat or dog treasure hidden by whoever in the animal part of the family right now considers my bed their sacred territory (they cycle).



for one reason or another - architecture, class, history - i never adopted the ethos of 'bed is only for sleeping' that makes so much rational sense and is so hard to adopt. most of my rest-life is spent in a succession of beds, from the narrow cot of my childhood, nestled between my writing table and the wall, under the window and under the bookshelves groaning with books, to the parade of dorms and rentals to the creaky queen-size in the corner of my room i'm occupying right now. beds are for reading, and for playing with cats, and for cuddling with your family, and for having really important conversations in, and for playing mindless games, and for laying in when depressed, and for sweltering in when sick, and for thinking, and for meditating, and sometimes for writing, and sometimes for dreaming about writing, and sometimes for drawing for hours, and sometimes just for being.

(beds are also for those slightly desperate midday naps when everything is just a bit too much and too loud; beds limit your input and output for a very tiny number of variables, they make everything just a bit easier.)

all hail the bed, i guess? the refuge and the harbor, even if sometimes you dig out a dog's chewed on toy from under your back at three in the morning with a curse.