Derailed

I lay on my back in the dark by myself, and summon sleep.

But it's not dark, totally. Yellow street light glare at me between blinds, one tiny slat stacked on another. And the tiny, stacked slats hang at me from every angle of the room, so that it's nearly completely illuminated in the middle of the night. There's no use trying to turn away.

Head filled with cotton. Vice clamped firmly on my temples. Burying my face in the pillow only intensifies the congestion on my left side. Then my right side. Then my left side again. My arm falls asleep under a pillow that'd been pulled askew at my collar bone so that I have to resettle all over again-- losing the ground I'd gained toward achieving that lovely, luscious spot in time, when reality gives way to a complete surrender and my entire being settles deep into reconstitution. A flash of empathy connects me to insomniacs everywhere. 

Settle back to corpse pose, and summon sleep again.

The light fades. Soon there's a high whine of a nearby train horn, growinglouder, and closer-- going aaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwnn, and aaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwnn, aaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwnn. Soon the train of thoughts travel across my mind, coming louder and closer-- one after another after another, bigger and faster, till I realize what's happening and in one huge motion, sweep it all away. Replace it with my special meditation image: a single, silent, see-through cube, hanging by some divine hook, swinginggently in an open sky, buoyed about by a beautiful breeze, full of an entire landscape of trees, valley, a mountain scene changing color from green, to red-- all of which I gaze upon from up above.

But then, the breeze becomes the whir of the table fan, the cube dissolves into the slats of yellow light, the silence replaced by an insistent thump. thump. thump. of some vaguely melodic beat. beat. beat. that I gallantly fight the urge to follow.

Finally, the wave of anxiety wells up, rises, and bursts all over me in a wash.

Now, I'm upright; awake, damn it. With a sigh, I let the virus consume me.

Comments

[James]

awww - sounds like you could use a hug!