There’s a brief space of time just before sleep where dreams seep through the gates of consciousness. It isn’t fully a dream, because I know how I got there, and am capable—if compelled—of escaping. But I am often weary, and willing to just watch as sleep submerges my waking mind...

What I see I cannot say, it depends on the day. On certain nights I spend my final hours playing countless games of online chess. The games are fast (Blitz—5 minutes allotted to each player) and I slowly feel the sharpness of my mind begin to dull. I commit the most elementary mistakes: hung rooks, knights, and flagrant miscalculations. My mind loses its ability of symmetrical perception: the white and black squares seemingly slide and slice against one another, killing my sense of direction (white or black, I cannot tell which way is forward). 

Soon after this I resign almost in rapture to my bed. I close my eyes and a feeling of exhaustion washes over me—not unlike usual sorts of exhaustion, when the mind blissfully exhales, when even the insomniac can descend into slumber with lithe ease. But my nights of chess have an added peculiarity.

I am sitting by the window of my bedroom gazing outside as snowflakes brush the glass. Feeling warmth in winter creates a singular path to the sublime, most potent at night, as the details are for the most part, dimmed. I am reading Leo Tolstoy’s seminal novel, Anna Karenina. The warm yellow glow of my lamp coats the pages, further accentuating my break from reality. As I read, I become aware of certain excesses of style, but allow for them simply because my reading mode is leisurely, not critical, and also because one cannot ignore the contexts that influenced Tolstoy’s work. Yet as a modern writer (unavoidably), the instinctive urge to make sentences most efficient still prods me; but to reword even a few lines could vastly distort the work, doing much harm to its voice and meaning(s).

 I truly enjoy and appreciate the novel, and much can be learned from Tolstoy. But I cannot and should not write in accordance to his style. Despite certain authors—and they are legion—who write as if the twentieth century never happened, it is of paramount importance to examine one’s surroundings and always consider reasonable modes of progress.