waking up

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2 a.m. seems to be the time to wake up lately. Not yet near enough to dawn to consider getting out of bed and yet difficult to find that cliff we all drop off when finding actual sleep.

Maybe it's needing to take a piss, though that hasn't really pushed my buttons. Or maybe it's the fact that I am yet another voodoo doll for doctors and pharmacological money-makers to stick their bottled pins into.

Whatever it is, 2 a.m. seems to be about the time to wake up and think thoughts that pass the time without any particular excitement ... the relative merits of baloney and liverwurst; a B movie I enjoyed; and then a night or two ago was a longish segment it's hard to describe:

Whatever thought I thought, in the moment when the thought was through, another thought would come along posing exactly the opposite of what had preceded it. What was ugly became beautiful; what was tall became short; what was simple became complex and vice versa. The opposites came along naturally on the heels of whatever initial proposition there had been. It was all smooth as water connected to wave.

And the interesting part was not so much this rag-tag army of odds-and-ends thoughts, but the fact that any aspect had precisely the same importance as the one preceding it. I seemed incapable of elevating one thing over another. It wasn't frightening or delightful or freighted with "Buddhism" ... it was just what happened, over and over again. No particular emotion, but not lacking emotion either. It's odd to write, but it wasn't odd at the time ... more quasi-boring, as if someone were saying "d'oh!" and you agreed with them.

All things considered, I'd rather sleep from 2 to 4 or 5, but that simply hasn't been in the cards lately.
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