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Friday, May 31, 2013

Things to do when you can't sleep







I wake up.  It's still dark out.  I can't go back to sleep so I go downstairs.  The clock in the kitchen says 3:30.  I think, "Oh crap."  Then I do the only reasonable thing to do when you wake up at 3:30 am and can't go back to sleep.  I make  coffee and drink a cup out on the front screen porch.  I light up a dirty rotten cigarette and curse myself for being a slave to nicotine.  I ask the saints to help me kick the habit and see the light.  It's nice and cool on the porch, a relief from the heat of yesterday. The fish tank is gurgling.  Two quail in a cage on the floor are making a racket.  Other than that, not much is happening.

I go back upstairs to my bed, thinking maybe I can go back to sleep and have a nice dream.  I toss and turn.  Sleep doesn't come.  Dawn is breaking.  I decide to try and mediate;  get up on my knees and elbows with my head cradled in my hands.  I breathe rhythmically, focusing my eyes on the pattern of my bed sheet.  I start to feel pretty good, relaxed, in the zone.  I notice when I'm really in the zone, the pattern on the sheet gets larger; when I slip out of the zone, it gets smaller.  I marvel at this phenonenon for a while and experiment with it; shifting my focus, making the pattern increase and decrease, advance and retreat.  I think, "The mind and the eyes really do work together like a camera."    I ponder this for a while.


I decide it would be a good idea to get my camera and see if I can duplicate what my mind and my eyes were doing with the sheet pattern.  It occurs to me that taking pictures of my bed sheet is a little crazy, but I don't care and do it anyway.  My bedroom window looks so lovely at this time of the morning.  I take a few pictures of it too.






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