No, it’s not my morning walk @ Daybreak @ Cove Island Park. Not yet 831 consecutive days, like in a row. It’s too damn early for that. 3 hours and 12 minutes before sunrise, to be precise. And here we are. As Ocean Vuong states in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous: “Let me begin again.”
I thought about that for a moment. “Let me begin again?” or, “Here we go again?”
2:36 a.m. I snatch the iPhone and check Sleep data: 5 consecutive days < 4 hours sleep. I check the Dark Sky app: Clear skies.
Sully pauses his snoring to open an eyelid. His big brown eye looking through me: What is wrong with you Man? He turns his head, and falls back asleep.
I slip out of bed, head downstairs, my bare feet pattering on the hard wood floors, careful not to trip over myself in the darkness. I step outside, scanning the skies. There you are. Waiting for me.
It’s quiet. No Metro-North train whistles in the distance, the last train passing an hour ago. No dogs barking. No critters scurrying in the shrubs. Just me, and the cool grass under my toes, and my mind whirring.
Has to be some reason you can’t sleep DK. Moon’s gravitational pulls on the tides, and on you? Despite the viciousness of your lactose intolerance, for lunch, the Vanilla Häagen-Dazs with chopped almonds, slathered with Stonewall Kitchen’s Raspberry Syrup? And again, knowing that the act is insanity, before bed, another heaping ramekin chaser, and yes, with chopped nuts and the Stonewall Kitchen Devil juice. Or, could it be the Cruller? Excuse me? Ok, the Cruller’s (plural) from Stop & Shop, three glazed miracle buns, two at lunch and another before bedtime, as a side accoutrement with the Häagen-Dazs. Oh, oh! that feeling…with each injection of sugar, the coating of the tongue, the teeth, the mouth, my lips. Yes, DK, yes, that feels right. You so needed that. That feels so much better.
Until it doesn’t. Until the next Fix.
I snap a few shots of the moon. 61° F, a whiff of autumn in the air, which feels way too soon for that.
I get back into bed, and turn to Selma Blair‘s memoir Mean Baby: A Memoir of Growing Up.
“Yehi or!” I’d yell at the top of my lungs, quoting from the first lines of Genesis, the Hebrew words for “Let there be light!” “Blair!” she would croak, rubbing her eyes. “Why do you do this?” Next I made my way around the room, throwing open the door, turning on the television atop Mom’s childhood maple dresser, her mother’s before her, and flicking on the lights. I needed life, immediately. I needed every bit of everything, every bit of help, anything I could reach in order to cheerlead myself into embracing my day. Even then, I did this.
I too need life, immediately.
Like right now.
DK Photo: Waning Gibbous Moon (95%). 2:57 a.m. 62° F. Darien, CT. “Go slowly, my lovely moon, go slowly.” — Khaled Hosseini (The Kite Runner)
