6.11.2010 | Healthy, wealthy and wise
The week ended with a disconcerting sense of aimlessness. When I've been working too much and then stop, I feel set adrift in a blankness, as if in a pitch black room. I grope for an end, a boundary, something I can lean up against and start again from intention. This morning, exhaustion convinced me not to run and later my throat began to tighten as if a from a sickness; I thought it best to call to say that I couldn't attend temae. The sun broke through in the deep afternoon, and by six, when I finally signed off from work, I looked up to a gorgeous Friday night ripe with summer nightgoing potential and had the profound sense of not knowing where I was or what I should do next. So I napped. Crawled into bed and read from paper until the weight of the words teased out the sleepiness and I fell asleep, and kept falling, until I had folded over all the creases in the sheets. I woke when the the heaviness chafed against a dream and in the dream I couldn't move. When I opened my eyes, the sun was still bright and I thought about the days, one, two, three—no, more than that until the solstice yet. I got up, looked in the mirror, saw the map of my sleep imprinted on my cheek and arm. Then the shoulds began to chime: I should make dinner, I should go out for a walk, I should call those people back that I haven't. I should have gone to class because I'm obviously not sick. I should feel like doing something. I thought, maybe if I write or do something not what I have been doing, that'll help. Make the critic go away. Something with a focus. What about dinner? Oh yes, I ate all that, but I don't need much. Egg, rice, oyster sauce—that's enough. Doing the dishes always helps ... done. Still drifting. I just need to sleep on it a whole night, I tell myself. Go to bed early, start the weekend rested. That'll set me right. I wish it were a comfort.