And so it begins. Another attempt at routine, this time a 6:15am first-thing-in-the-morning sit-down, attempting morning pages. Semi-comatose. Of course the irony (if that’s the right word) is that this morning everything looks different because seemingly overnight it all leafed out everywhere and I feel like I’m falling falling, falling into a sea of green. The sun, barely risen at the extreme left of my vast picture plane, suffuses the scene with golden light. The whole spectacle is powerful, violent, even. Vast. Vastly different.
I’m so tired. Slept badly. Woken by nightmares twice. It’s unusual I should have nightmares at all, it’s unusual I should wake up from a dream. To have two in one night is epic, practically. The first came after about an hour of sleep. I was at home, here in this house, alone. It was day. I heard a thud outside and thought it was a package delivery. I went to the front entry, and a package was there, inside the house. At that point I realized someone must be in the house with me. As I tried to leave the house (to escape), it / he approached me – of course I could only move in slow motion by this point. I woke up, gasping, almost screaming.
Okay, back to sleep. Or at least try. I couldn’t. I lay awake. At 2:45a.m. W. stirred. I asked him the time, he told me. I’d been tossing and turning for 2-3/4 hours (the first nightmare was at 12a.m.). I had especially gone to bed early to be well-rested this morning. Not looking so good. Finally, back to sleep, only to wake up again, I think around 4a.m., because I was convinced a small ghost child was hopping around on the bed near my feet. Really freaked me out. I sat up and pointed, still convinced even once awake that I could see it, and practically yelled for W. to look. Back to sleep after that. At 5:50a.m. or so W. woke up, woke me up, too, to announce that he was awake, but would stay in bed for another ten minutes. So did I.
Feels like someone bashed me over the head.
Perhaps the restlessness came from the warm weather. I had two bedroom windows open, but otherwise decided to conserve heat in the house as the temperature was predicted to drop from Sunday’s 87ºF high and Monday’s 74º-77ºF high to a high of only 49ºF today. And yes, this morning is quite cool, I’m sitting here wearing two layers of clothing. Yesterday was way warmer than first announced. The house was frankly stifling. In the afternoon I walked past the library to drop off a book, then continued to H.-St., down A.-Ave. to L.-St. Stopped at D.-Street Beach, which was full of people on the sand, dogs, kids playing (it’s school vacation, too) – summer, without summer vegetation. Just hot. Not especially pleasant when wearing a mixed fabric (synthetics) blouse. I was sweating. I thought, Who am I kidding when I think I’ll stay here? A. had phoned earlier. He was in a bad mood because his startup hit a snag, nothing I can help him with. I continued to marinate in my dark thoughts about [B., city], about my future. I suppose if I kept a chart of positive-vs-negative thoughts about [city], I would for the most part fill the negative side with check marks. What’s galling is that sometimes it feels as though the minority positive thoughts still outweigh the negative ones because they’re heftier, like a leafed-out tree versus a winter-beaten bare one. The negative fades into memory, it’s discounted, and the positive one is valued higher, valued more. Perhaps it’s a “bird-in-the-hand” bias: oh look, it’s not so bad here. Meanwhile, a vision of other possibilities slips away.
Last night (different topic) I spent hours it seemed trying to figure out if we can somehow “McGyver” the oven door broken glass problem. It really is impossible to get the part since the oven model, only five years old, is discontinued (just like that, thanks, Whirlpool), but I think it’s an outrage I should throw out a whole 36″ gas range as a consequence. So expensive. Such a waste. Not doing it.