Day 802
An old radio station. Honkey Cat. Songs from the 60s. The only song I ever wrote. My old Datsun 1200 with a cassette deck hidden in the glove compartment. My VTX 1800...
It was 5:15 this morning, and I'd been laying in bed wide awake for the past several minutes with my mind going a mile a minute, fueled by random thoughts from various seasons of my life.
My Sermon on the Battlefield. Selling shingles. Hacking the Purdue mainframe with stud-plato-recipie and playing the inter-connected Star Trek game for hours. Pinball. Soccer. Sweeping floors...
It was neither pleasant nor unpleasant, just time spent alone in my head while trying to go back to sleep, or at least not waking up my wife.
Basketball on carpet. Interviews on TV. HBO dishes in the attic. Did-It-Myself garage stairs and that damn ceiling fan. Rabbits in the house...
About thirty minutes into this visceral vacation, I had the shocking realization that I had been running around the playground of my mind with no sexual fantasies, thoughts, or memories. It struck me profoundly, not so much that I'd been able to go thirty minutes with a 'clean' brain, but because it was evident to me in every way that this was unusual, maybe unprecedented.
Pills. Shots. Dark rooms with strangers. Porn...
Damn, there they are. Well-played, my addict friend, well-played. Now get the hell out of here.
The realization that I was not having those thoughts I try so hard not to have triggered me into a very short trip on the tricky train through the morass of memories and my many messes. And then it stopped. Almost as quickly as it jumped on the tracks, it jumped off and was replaced with a reboot of the previous stream of consciousness.
eBikes. Storage totes. New trails. A friend who is telling his Dr. about his addiction later today. The new iPhone software. Fixing my wife's computer. My daughter's dog (that is already fixed). My dad's irrigation system that I need to fix...
Forty-five minutes later, my watch vibrated and I began transitioning from whatever form of sleep that had seeped into my early morning blues and greens into the reds and yellows of the approaching sunrise. I don't know how long I'd been asleep — or if I had been at all — but I had this strange sensation of having rested well, despite the memories from several times during the night of having to get up for various reasons (including the aforementioned dog).
There was a peace in me that was almost uncomfortable.
I'm taking two things from this experience. The first is how unusual this is for me that a mere hour or so of being awake without the near-constant battle of sexual thoughts should be so... weird. At least right now, it feels like another validation that I've got a serious problem between the ears (yes, I still question that). The second takeaway is that another Promise of the program just might be coming to fulfillment.
–JR
A distant night bird mocks the sun.
I wake as I have always done,
To freshly scented sycamore
And cold bare feet on hardwood floor.
–The Monkees, “Early Morning Blues and Greens"
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