Walking. Walking it down the cheek.

~ Live & Learn

tear-cheek

1:32 am.

Halldór’s nightlessness and insomnia in all directions.

A new routine, and I’ve grooved it. To bed early, wake early, read to exhaustion, and back to sleep until sunrise.

I flick on the iPad, illuminating the dark. I get after it. The Journal. The Times. Apple News. Blog posts. RSS feeds in Feedly. A few late night incoming emails. And then to dessert, a chapter or two on Kindle, half-way through Lebedev’s Oblivion.  It’s 3:15 am, I’m turning pages on a title called Oblivion, now that’s something. You must sleep, or you will pay dearly.

I set the e-gear down, turn on the left side, and pull up the covers. Fragments of news, pages, posts, emails and today’s full day calendar are flitting by, churning, the mind workin’, workin’. Anxiety…A piece rises to the top. Begley: “A compulsion is at once psychological balm and curse, surface madness and profound relief…The ability of compulsive behaviors to quiet anxieties great and small is one of the greatest gifts our brains can give us.”

I pause, close my eyes, and marinate in this…if this is the greatest gift our brains can give us, I am fully gifted, fully loaded. FULL UP.

And, then, it stopped. The churning stopped.

A pin drop of a tear was forming in the right eye, the body’s self-producing balm in response to two hours of artificial light blasts to both corneas. It builds, pooling in the socket, and then leaks out from under the eyelid starting on its journey.

The tear slides ever so gently down the cheek, a snail secreting its pedal mucus for locomotion.

I turn, flatten my head to slow Snail, it pauses. Issa: little snail / facing this way / where to now?”

The Mind, now fresh, clear, blue – seawater in Antartica.

I tilt my head back and Snail continues on his journey, moisturizing my skin on its way down.

What does it take to form this tear drop at this moment?
What is the source?
What is the manufacturing process? 
What is the trigger?
How is it that we are produced and wired with lamellar corpuscles so sensitive that we can feel tear drops at their formation?
And, what, what is this magnificent soothing Power over me?

0 steps.

Nap time.

Notes:

28 thoughts on “Walking. Walking it down the cheek.”

  2. I do enjoy your writing. I also want to caution you about filling your mind up with all this ‘news’ in the middle of the night when your body needs rest and respite from it all, especially when stimulated by the unnatural light of the ipad. There is good in the world, no matter the horror – and we need to remember it for the sake of sanity.
    In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the nighttime is when yin takes over the yang (yin is also dark/night; yang is sun/light) an the spirit/Shen finds rest. There is so much beyond our control. Enough to cry about until the rivers run dry. I know of what I speak.

    Now mother has cautioned you, be a good boy and get your beauty rest. Hugs and ❤

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  6. “What does it take to form this tear drop at this moment?
    What is the source?
    What is the manufacturing process?
    What is the trigger?
    How is it that we are produced and wired with lamellar corpuscles so sensitive that we can feel tear drops at their formation?
    And, what, what is this magnificent soothing Power over me?”

    My friend…
    I’m crying now and can’t stop!
    We feel things out side our bodies. Things so far, far away. Why are you surprised we’re built to feel what’s forming in our bodies.

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  11. This really touched me, Dave. You’re working so hard in the wee hours of the night. I, too, have had my share (2x this week awake at 1:30 😩). Of the many things I’ve read about sleep hygiene (yes, there is such a thing), is that we thwart any hope of falling back asleep if we turn on our devices. Reading with soft lighting helps me sometimes.
    I worry about how hard you are on yourself, always pushing…… kindness toward self is one of the 10 commandments, I think.

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