I am sitting here, in my living room, at 3 o’clock in the morning – in the dark- with nothing to do except think. Random thoughts are coming out of my neural woodwork like rats leaving a sinking ship. Images, memories, ideas… all coalescing to form an advance guard with one purpose: to destroy any sense of somnolence I might have had.
Yes, I have insomnia. Again. My mind is a tumult of worries, anxieties, and things I wouldn’t give much attention to if I wasn’t trying to sleep. Haphazardly, they just pop up out of nowhere with no logical context. Things like…
Iguanas:
Yesterday, we had our first iguana fight on the palm by the dining room window. A big male was threatening a much smaller male who eventually came to his senses and ran off with the bigger male in hot pursuit. There was also a female. We saw her in her “colors”. And I’m here thinking there will probably be lots more little iguanas to come.
As far as I can tell, there are only five of them now, and they mostly live in our big oak tree. But I swear I saw two more outside our front porch in copulo, this morning. By the time we die, I figure our daughter, Jennifer, will inherit a whole colony of iguanas. Lucky her!
Tattoos:
I could get a tattoo, like an image of the ocean – on my butt cheeks. It would be cool…’cause if I lost enough weight, there’d still be enough remaining cellulite and flab for the “ocean” to have waves. (Maybe even a tsunami – or seiche? – if I could walk fast enough.) I told my husband, Howard, my idea and I got no reply. So much for enthusiastic spousal support for wild ideas – especially in the middle of the night. I guess we’ve been married for too long.
Geriatrics:
Several years ago I fell out of our pickup truck and fractured my hip. The consequences of the fall are lodged within my psyche. And they come out at night. I still have the walker although I don’t need it now. (I’m saving it for later.)
I remember using it. But it was so, so slow.
So I sit here now – in the dark- thinking of ways to speed it up. In my restless, sleep-seeking mind, I’m working on a design for a motorized walker, a walker with dual engines. I’m
thinking that we (that be mainly Howard) could mount an electric scooter to the base of each side. Estimated speed? A probable 30 – 40 mph. I’ve read that there’s a scooter that can do maybe even 100 mph. I bet braking would be a bitch, not to mention the road burn. And then there’s flying by the house of the two cops who live down the street. (I’ll leave you to conjure up that image on your own.)
Domestics:
If I wasn’t wasting time trying to sleep, I could be house cleaning, domestic diva that I am. In the dark, I worry about what I can’t see, that I have lost the war on dust bunnies, that dust chupacabras are coming to carry me off. I imagine they perform in a cirque du soleil of their own.
In my insomnolence. I could change the table cloth. I waited two months the last time I changed it – just before Thanksgiving and before it crawled off on its own accord. But now I have another worry, what if the dining room lights wake my sleeping husband? Then no one will sleep.
Brown bananas:
I can’t sleep when I’m hungry but what if the refrigerator is almost empty? What if there’s nothing in it but foods I don’t like? Foods that might be unsightly, like brown overripe bananas.
So dark and mushy, so repugnant. They look like something I would be sorry I stepped in. But my baking friends say they are delicious in breads, ice cream, muffins, smoothies…
Maybe I should take up dieting. But which diet? A banana diet? No way. I’ll just dream about it, when I finally get to sleep.
Mortality:
I think about dying. It’s easy to do when you are sitting in the dark. They say a person’s brain can live a few seconds to a number of minutes after they die. I wonder what is going on in their minds at that time. Are they in darkness too? Does an active post-mortem mind realize it’s trapped inside an almost lifeless body? Can it feel its nerve cells unraveling? Does their mind silently scream to get out (ex. Harlan Ellison’s “I have No Mouth, and I must Scream”)? Is premortem time similar to pre-sleep time?
In either case, dead or alive, it’s time to shut down these thoughts and go to sleep.
If only I could. There are so many other things to think about…
