The guy in the middle rack next to mine was hard-timing it, sleeping 15 to 18 hours. This was standard among tweakers who had gotten busted after a five- or six-day binge of no sleep.

Night is when cold and flu gets the worst. Forget to take my Medication (stop doing that) sleep much as possible (trying trying, easier in the day Supply: corn beef — low Medication — 3 …

It’s twilight. Walking deeper than usual into my loop of a route (no backtracking!), past the point when I’ll let myself turn around. Now I’m pumped. Now the songs on the Walkman make my gait …

The crowd starts filling the stools at Dobson’s by five o’clock each evening, emerging from the law offices and banking halls to line the narrow space within the walls of the old Spreckels Theatre Building. …

Night? I know about Night. It was before I started to compare things, to measure things, to judge the world by reason. There the universe spoke a different language, the language of Night. I was …

In a La Jolla oceanfront hotel, an elderly anorexic alcoholic picked at tiny oysters bedded in spinach and told me the story of her life. Orphaned at 8, married at 18 — “Married well!” She …

To begin with, I slept badly at night and never in the day. But gradually my nights became better, and I managed to doze off in the daytime as well. In fact, during the last …

It’s an empty middle-of-the-week hump night, Wednesday, two-thirty a.m. The moon is full; the uncommonly illuminated sky is azure and clear, bright as it most often is a half-hour before sunup. University Avenue looks broader …

I don’t know whether insomnia is programmed in the DNA, but my grandmother, my father, and I all had sleeping problems. From earliest childhood, say by the age of five, I would wake in the …

It is a humbling experience to return to the ghetto at night. To expect a few inconveniences on the way back to paradise has become a doleful routine for any denizen who resides in Southeast …

It’s Sunday, 2 a.m. A dark balmy night. Imperial Avenue is quiet, almost deserted, but there’s action up ahead, across from the old welfare office on 25th Street — now fenced in and vacant. A …

1:00 a.m. The dyslexic hour. Words on computer monitor start to run together. Squinting. Brain tired. Slumping. Sleep summons. The house has been quiet for hours. My favorite time of day, my “afternoon.” Quiet time. …

The electric sodium lights hiss in the zoo’s parking lot. A winged beetle flops, buzzes feebly on the cement apron next to where I park the car. The 11 p.m. air is vaguely scented with …