The Stories We Don’t Turn Into Stories

It’s that kind of weariness that comes from lack of sleep. Getting to bed after midnight and waking at 6:30am to the alarm for about ten days in a row will do that to you. Or to me, at least. It’s not that when I’m tired I can’t see the stories, no, that’s not the case.

Today there was Hanshi, and his speech about how to control a fight by controlling the head. There was the awkward comedy of telling twelve people twelve different times at work that, “Today I only have hummus, onion, tomato, bagels, and bread,” and then explaining why 70% of the menu was not available. There was the informal study I conducted on my kitchen mice as I sat on the countertop in the dark and ate a grapefruit very, very slowly. There was the bard owl, it’s death-cry and four-pulsed call into the night. There was the dream I had last night about the Israeli, how he wore John Lennon glasses and a garland of red hot chili peppers and how I woke laughing at the dream and then laughing at myself because I had rolled over onto the pillows where he’d slept and left his scent. There was the two hours of roadwork I put into the driveway this afternoon to prepare for this weekend’s party (the scrape, the lift, the cussing, and then the delightful discovery of a trillium grove).

So the stories are there, just waiting to be written. They can be written to be captured, written to be understood, written to inspire, written to draw parallels, written into their own truths. But it’s my temperament that goes down the tubes when I don’t get enough sleep.

Tomorrow is Friday. I will work and then come home and put about four hours into the road. Then I will finish a book. Then I will sleep, hard, hard, and long.