CCLXVIII: Naps Return with a Vengeance

The past couple of nights have seen me operating on a different time zone. I keep falling asleep on the couch for an hour or more while trying to catch up on my TV, and then eventually go to bed around 3:00am due to a number of factors: the nap, a shower, internet time-mismanagement, and The Count of Monte Cristo. I will soon be entering into my third month of reading this classic novel and am less than 300 pages away from the end. And the end of novels are always bittersweet since on the one hand the reader finds closure in a conclusion; on the other hand, it is the end of the story--you have to say goodbye to the characters forever unless you choose to reread the book, and even then, your imagination is the only vehicle that can take you to the possible literary afterlife of the protagonists.

The Count of Monte Cristo is largely a story about revenge; a much-deserving settling of moral accounts that is carefully planned, painstakingly calculated, and indirectly carried out, using other people as the agents of Providence. It is a vengeance twenty-four years in the making, patiently suppressed in order to carry out the ultimate desired effects.

And on a much smaller and more real scale, my body has held out for me through all of my sleep deprivation and stress from work to manifest itself two-fold. Yes, it was I who took two naps last night before going to bed, and I still feel tired.