(The following passage is excerpted from an essay by a twentieth-century American author.) In France, on a rented canal boat, my friends and I gazed in despair at the closed oaken gates of the lock. We’d come to them only seconds after the witching hour of noon, but we were too late. There was no one to open the lock for us; l’éclusière1 was at lunch, and after lunch she would lay herself down, close her eyes, and nap. At two, but not before, she would emerge refreshed from her square granite house and set the great cogs in motion. We tied the boat up to a spindly bush beside the towpath and waited. And waited. It was high haying season, but the fields lay empty of farmers. The roads lay empty of trucks. France lunched, and then slept. So did Spain. So did much of the civilized world. If we’d been differently nurtured we too would have taken a nap, but we were Americans, condemned from the age of four to trudge through our sleepless days. Americans are afraid of naps. Napping is too luxurious, too sybaritic,2 too unproductive, and it’s free; pleasures for which we don’t pay make us anxious. Besides, it seems to be a natural inclination. Those who get paid to investigate such things have proved that people deprived of daylight and their wristwatches, with no notion of whether it was night or day, sink blissfully asleep in midafternoon as regular as clocks. Fighting off natural inclinations is a major Puritan3 virtue, and nothing that feels that good can be respectable. They may have a point there. Certainly the process of falling asleep in the afternoon is quite different from bedtime sleep. Whether this is physiological or merely a by-product of guilt, it’s a blatantly sensual experience, a voluptuous surrender, akin to the euphoric swoon of the heroine in a vampire movie. For the self-controlled, it’s frightening—how far down am I falling? will I ever climb back? The sleep itself has a different texture. It’s blacker, thicker, more intense, and works faster. Fifteen minutes later the napper pops back to the
The author describes an experience in France, where they were waiting for a lock to open on their rented canal boat.
Why is this so?They had arrived just after noon, but the person who was supposed to open the lock was at lunch and taking a nap afterwards.
The author notes that in much of the civilized world, people take naps after lunch, but Americans are afraid of naps because they are seen as too luxurious, unproductive, and free.
The author muses on the pleasures of taking an afternoon nap, noting that it is a sensual and euphoric experience, but also frightening for the self-controlled.
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