sleep has been a real issue for me of late (meaning 20 years). i’ve been trying different strategies and mechanisms and formulas in pursuit of sleep, but it remains an enigma. i’m not quite sure how people do it.
last night i tried an experiment with melatonin. i took the suggested dose and i waited an hour for something to happen. but nothing happened. so i tried another dose. and i waited again. and still nothing. and by 4:30a.m. i may have tried a third dose which finally knocked me out for 2 hours of really disconcerting but happy dreams… and then i had to go to work.
most of the day was spent in a thick fog. but as the day wore on, I had drank so much coffee that the fog had no other choice but to move somewhere else. although mania is a different kind of fog.
somehow made it through the work day, all charged up, just in time to meet a former work colleague/friend for a drink in this vast ornate hotel lobby bar. the upscale happy hour scene. i swear i never drink and i’m not upscale and i honestly could not tell you if i am happy or not. although i am immensely grateful to be here. but i was compelled to order something called the Rockland or the Richmond or the Richmond, i really can’t remember what it was called but basically it was a vodka martini, the size of a pond. with a waspy-sounding name that began with an “R.” Maybe it was a Rochester. i just don’t know.
after i drank about 1/4 of it, i began to notice that all of the gray haired people sitting around us, in this vast expansive ballroom, were making out. furiously making out….the kind that just goes on and on and on. but with a sense of desperation. the whole scene felt like a convergence of a 7th grade Friday night ‘spin the bottle’ party and a scene from The Shining. or maybe it just felt apocalyptic.
from there, i had to run to the theater to see a play by this playwright i barely know, but we have mutual admiration for each other’s work. the play had actually been running for about 6 weeks, but i had very strategically opted to go tonight because i knew for a fact that if i waited until tonight, there was no possibility of running into the person who spurned me over the summer.
i made it to the theater just in time, walked to a seat in the back row, utterly relieved that my plan was working perfectly. and just as the lights were fading down and music was fading up, this very person walked into the room. and i climbed into my copy of the program notes, hoping i could elude her. but it didn’t quite work. she asked if i would mind if she sat in the next chair. i said, of course not, please. we had not spoken since July.
the play was mainly about… for lack of a better term… the impossibility of human relationships, or the out-of-syncness of relationships. how fragmented we can be. i’m not really describing it very well because it’s late. and the only reason i am writing at all at this hour is because i may want to find meaning in this day at some point in the future and if i don’t capture some semblance of it now, it will be gone forever.
The Lost Pedestrian 