Hello and welcome to Textbook Sleep, the Maximum-Strength Sleep Aid, please do not listen while operating heavy machinery.

Tonight I’ll be presenting another reading from one of the world’s dullest books.

It’s a doozy—The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant. It’s philosophy, but we are not brought together tonight for insight, for an epiphany, we just want to zonk out. Perhaps when you wake, wisdom will somehow be imparted to you, but I doubt it. Your sleeping brain, your “unconscious,” will take you to a place without Kant’s unintelligible philosophical musings; maybe it will take you to where I like to go, to Italy, where people debate the primacy of one gelato flavor over another, or what scarf or cravat to wear on the evening’s passeggiata, the evening promenade through town. These should be the only issues of real importance in life, and the only ones you may grapple with tonight as you sleep deeply and restfully.

Imagine then, that you are a naïve student, talked into taking a philosophy course by a classmate whose advice you have not yet learned to ignore. You have gone to the library to catch up on 150 pages of reading, your first assignment, and last, because you will sensibly drop the course. All is still, the library is almost empty. Light filters in through the window, a beam of it enveloping and warming your body. Your head feels heavy; your neck, weak. For just a little while, why not rest it upon the desk, no one will see. It’s time for the passeggiata, for a stroll, with a stop for a cioccolato all’arancia, that is, an orange-chocolate gelato—yes, that is where you are heading, I’m sure of it. Let’s get you on your way…

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