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Riding Metro North. Est-ce-réel?

July 28, 2017 by 34 Comments

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It came Monday afternoon, an Amazon order. Tall, soft and plastic, the kind that you would see end up with other marine debris choking the life out of Nemo in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Calm is stenciled in 80 point font on the cylindrical container. “Natural Vitality Natural Calm Calmful Sleep Magnesium Anti Stress Extra Sleep Support, Organic, Wildberry, 16 oz.”

Bullsh*t. No chance this works but desperate people need to take desperate…

“Natural Vitality Natural Calm Calmful.”

Seriously? Really? Who writes their copy? What idiot would buy something with this lead?

I yank off the seal, tilt, then look down inside. The soft, white pillowy substance slides to one side and then the other. Contents may settle. Product sold by weight not volume“. It has settled below the half way mark. $28.49. Bullsh$t. Shysters. At least get it above halfway. [Read more…]

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Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

July 17, 2017 by 23 Comments

Photographer Franco Banfi and a team of scuba divers were following a pod of sperm whales in Dominica Island when suddenly the large creatures became motionless and began to take a synchronized vertical rest. This strange sleeping position was first discovered only in 2008, when a team of biologists from the UK and Japan drifted into their own group of non-active sperm whales. After studying tagged whales the team learned this collective slumber occurs for approximately 7 percent of the animal’s life, in short increments of just 6-24 minutes.

You can see more of the Switzerland-based photographer’s underwater photography on his website and Instagram

Source: A Photographer Captures the Unusual Way Sperm Whales Sleep via thisiscollosal.com, July 4, 2017)

Thank you Eric.

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Count down…

July 10, 2017 by 34 Comments

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Source: Peteski

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Running. Against Time. To Relief.

July 2, 2017 by 24 Comments

4:59 a.m.

Dark Sky reports 71° F. Cloudy for three hours. 22 minutes til sunrise. And…95% humidity.

I’m out the door.  The edge of night has turned. I’m late. Disappointment drips. Morning brings others. I’m part way through Catherine Lacey’s “The Answers” where she explains: “Some people need to be unseen, to be alone, to be unreachable. And there was nothing wrong with this…”  This felt so right, so me. Yet, I would have finished it differently…“And there is everything right with this.”

It’s not been a good week – not a single, self-inflicted act, but a culmination of events. A cumulative pile-up of sleep deficit.

  • 4 hours. (Monday)
  • 5 hours. (Tuesday)
  • 5 hours. (Wednesday)
  • 6 hours (Thursday)
  • 4 hours (Friday)
  • 6 hours (Saturday)

A cumulative deficit of 18 hours. The insomniac gets through his days, 1/2 present, 1/2 hallucinating. This Man, blessed to be migraine-free, now has intermittent lightening bolts sizzle – Warning shots – Wake-up calls.

It’s a new habit. Deep sleep for two to four hours and then UP, followed by half-a**ed attempts to get back to sleep.

The e-equipment on the night stand beckons.  Work emails. 5-6 books at various stages of completion. Early morning editions of the newspapers. Blog posts. A dozen unplayed podcasts. Music playlists.

No. Don’t reach for it. Don’t touch it. [Read more…]

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Riding Metro North. With Sunbeam.

June 16, 2017 by 37 Comments

You think you might give me a run for it, but you can’t touch me. You can’t come close, not remotely close to my Superiority. Top 1% of the 1% in…

Mood Swings. 

Close your eyes and think bungee jumper, in an infinite loop, who’s boinging up and down in a zone which pulls up short of Bliss and a whisker from Abyss. Not too hot, but hot enough to pinch, and not too cold, but cold enough to feel frost bite, and once in a while tasting Despair, but never lallygagging in Euphoria.

It’s the 5:40 am train. I have the entire seat to myself on Metro North to NYC.

We’re operating on 4.5 hours of sleep, and hauling the wet slushy snow of accumulated sleep deprivation from the prior three days.  Eyes heavy. Shoulders heavy. Words from the morning papers slur together.  I set down the smartphone.

Tired. Sick and tired of being tired, and bored writing about tired. Tired³. [Read more…]

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I imagine what it must be like to…stay still in the night

June 14, 2017 by 14 Comments

There are no birds or anything, or none that I can see. I imagine what it must be like to stay hidden, disappear in the dusky nothing and stay still in the night. It’s not sadness, though it may sound like it. I’m thinking about people and trees and how I wish I could be silent more, be more tree than anything else, less clumsy and loud, less crow, more cool white pine, and how it’s hard not to always want something else, not just to let the savage grass grow.

~ Ada Limón, “Mowing,” from Bright Dead Things: Poems

Photo: (via Hidden Sanctuary)

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Karmar Repair Kit 1-4

May 28, 2017 by 28 Comments

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1. Get enough food to eat,
and eat it.

2. Find a place to sleep where it is quiet,
and sleep there.

3. Reduce intellectual and emotional noise
until you arrive at the silence of yourself,
and listen to it.

4.

~ Richard Brautigan, “Karma Repair Kit 1-4″ from The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster

Source: Thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels. Photo: via Your Eyes Blaze Out

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Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

May 1, 2017 by 30 Comments

Coffee anyone?

Photo: Patty Maher with Concentric Circles

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Swirl it around and find it

April 25, 2017 by 33 Comments

Set aside 10 minutes before you go to bed each night to write down three things that went really well that day. Next to each event answer the question, “Why did this good thing happen?”

Instead of focusing on life’s lows, which can increase the likelihood of depression, the exercise “turns your attention to the good things in life, so it changes what you attend to,” Dr. Martin E.P. Seligman said. “Consciousness is like your tongue: It swirls around in the mouth looking for a cavity, and when it finds it, you focus on it. Imagine if your tongue went looking for a beautiful, healthy tooth.” Polish it.

~ Julie Scelfo, excerpt from Get Happy: Four Well-Being Workouts (NY Times, April 5, 2017)

Photo: Pinterest

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Saturday Morning

April 8, 2017 by 22 Comments

In theory, for example, sleep is a negative thing, a mere cessation of life. But nothing will persuade me that sleep is not really quite positive, some mysterious pleasure which is too perfect to be remembered. It must be some drawing on our divine energies, some forgotten refreshment at the ancient fountains of life. If this is not so, why do we cling to sleep when we have already had enough of it; why does waking up always seem like descending from heaven upon earth? I believe that sleep is a sacrament; or, what is the same thing, a food.

— G.K. Chesterton, Lunacy and Letters

Quote: WhiskeyRiver. Art via Mennyfox55

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