In , a sleep researcher named Nathaniel Kleitman and his assistant, Bruce Richardson, descended into the damp, limestone belly of Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. They brought with them two beds, a washstand, a table, and the intent to break the human relationship with the sun.
They wanted to see if the human body could adapt to a twenty-eight-hour day, they wanted to prove that the rhythm of life was a matter of habit rather than a biological law, they wanted to master the internal clock through sheer environmental control. The cave stayed a constant . The darkness was absolute.
Richardson, the younger man, managed to shift his body to the new schedule, but Kleitman’s body refused. His temperature continued to rise and fall on a regardless of when he turned the lamps on or off.
We are all, in our own way, trying to live in Mammoth Cave. We ignore the limestone walls of the work week, we ignore the washstand of our obligations, we ignore the internal temperature that tells us who we are and when we should be asleep.
The Grim Arithmetic of the Exhausted
At on a Sunday night, a man named Andre lies on his back and listens to the refrigerator hum through the apartment wall.