Mistaken by its Very Glow

There are a million reasons to wake up.

I can't find one of them. So what. So I would like to sleep forever. I'm just not sure that sleeping in death is the same way as sleeping in life, which is disconcerting. If I could sleep in death and dream, I might like that. That would not be so bad. But I believe sleep in death is a black sleep, like the kind you get sometimes where your head hits the pillow, and you sense blackness, stillness, nothingness. It's not like when you are so tired that you go to sleep and the next thing you get back up again. It's very close to that. It's the same thing as sleeping and waking, but once awake you remember jet blackness. Nothingness.

That's what I think death is, and it petrifies me. I think of my father, deep in his eighties, and how he is so miserable with life. Everything hurts, nothing brings him pleasure except watching television, he is just a miserable old man facing the end of his life on earth. I worry about that. I worry that one day he will be gone. I'm in a dreaded fear of it, but this is the way of life. I just wonder what it will be like when my turn is up, when all of my friends are dropping like flies. I say them and not me because I'm going to live for a long fucking time. Or so I hope.

Well, after that digression, I awake to a new... night. That's right, I wake up at 4:30 and the window is already starting to grow dark. I get up and make dinner for later. Pasta and tuna. My staple that I happen to like. I'm going to have to increase the scope of my staples to add variety to my breakfast, which is coffee; lunch, which is a spam sandwich; and dinner, which is pasta and tuna. It really doesn't vary much after that.

Then I get online, and stay there, reading email, write an article that will never see the light of day, unless I publish it here in bits and pieces, and read the news. What's most distressing to me right now...four cops shot dead in Seattle Washington. Damn. They weren't even on duty yet, they were doing paperwork on their laptops when someone walked in and gunned them down, and then eluded the police. Shit, motherfucker.

Well, that's enough of that. Like I said, it's distressing. I crank out twenty push-ups just for the fuck of it and forty back raises. Just a little at a time. Push the body slightly, but firmly. I run out of sugar for my coffee, so I get my clothes on and head down to the nearby twenty-four hour drug store and buy coffee and honey...because I prefer honey in my coffee, and tuna fish. Then I wander over to the hardware section of the store and low and behold, they have night lights! Damn. I didn't think of that. I have plugs right over my kitchen counter-top. Why don't I buy one of these fucking night lights and plug it in, illuminating my counter-top and the surrounding area. A light where my microwave light is absent. Whoopee!

I can't wait to get it home, stocking everything into my cabinets and then unwrapping the light, plugging it into the wall. It's LED controlled, so I have to turn off the oppressive 'big light' in the room at the wall outlet, dropping the room into darkness, and then....


...this weak assed blue glow emanates from the night light. What the fuck? Shit. I walk over to the counter-top and can barely see, the light from the night light is so poor. Damn, I should have known better. Night lights are meant to supply subtle illumination to keep areas dark but not in darkness. I shake my head and leave the damn thing on. Something is better than nothing. I return to my desk, to my laptop and check emails. I begin to yawn again, and this time I do not wait until my head starts to bob. I jump right into bed and call it a night.

I have black sleep, like I explained before, and feel cheated the next morning when I wake up shivering. Damn, I left the air conditioner on FAN and it kept blowing outside air all night. The air outside must have dropped in temperature, dropping the fan temperature, dropping the room temperature. Fuck. I get up, turn off the fan and jump back into the bed, hoping not to wake up, because if I do, the water pills in my body will, as if by magic, activate and cause me to go to the bathroom. I close my eyes, curl up into the fetal position, but it is too late. I have to go to the bathroom real bad. I roll out of bed, put on my night shirt and slippers and head outside to take a leak. Afterward I return to a dream of which the only part that I can remember is urinating over a bowl. I open my eyes. I have to go to the bathroom again.

My day begins now, at 10:30 where I get on the computer, check email and now work on the SHOUT OUT paperwork. There is a lot, and much of it is jumbled up, making the work extra hard in sorting all of it out for our demographic research. The doorbell rings.

Wha? I don't have uninvited guests...oh, the repairman!!! I jump up and get dressed and open the door, and let in the maintenance man with a bulb for my microwave. He struggles with the mother fucker for a few minutes, something like twenty, and finally, to his relief, changes the bulb. He has me sign paperwork and then waves me good day. I do the same and then turn on the light and turn off the 'big light' Ahhh, the beautiful, bright microwave light illuminating my countertop.

I tell you, some things go right for me in the space pod. I sit down in comfort, turning off the microwave light and letting the night light kick on with its feeble glow. Now though, it is fine.

I can deal with it.
I am now happy in my own little world.

Hobobob