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Tag Archives: sleepless

Awake

28 Wednesday Jun 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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awake, ocean, sleepless

Sleepless means I slept in your bed, eventually, studying the cottage paint pale in the moonlight until I could finally rest. I listened to trucks and cars and motorcycles traveling a dark road at a strange hour of the night.  They know who they are and where they’re going, but it’s all just invisible sounds to a woman trying to stop her mind from thinking and find her way into anesthetic sleep after a long, good day. I touched your arm.

I started writing something in my head that night, something about my other bed where blunt leaves nod and toss not so far from my window in the wind, a bed that squeaks horrendously if I move my head or blink or think. I began writing a little thing comparing nights and beds and trees and leaves but I didn’t get up to write it down, naturally.  I forgot everything.

Sleepless means I’m up at all hours, I sleep at strange hours, I write and walk and eat and drive at strange hours, not avoiding people necessarily, but it happens and I like it.

I’m awake when you’re getting home from a long night out. I see you in uniform heading out for the day. I see you come home to greet your cat on the windowsill, or sliding in and putting on the tube, a movie that emanates from your window, some kind of drama with raised voices that calls me to come and make sure everything’s all right.  Sleepless means I heard your fireworks at 10:30 but didn’t look out the window to see; I was reading, and I’m sure you’ll forgive me.

Sleepless means I can tell the time and weather by the sky as I lay prone looking out my bedroom window, heartburn burning, and this morning the birds were full up and at ’em.  I pulled on leggings and went outside, felt the air and realized I’d need a warmer shirt so I pulled on the flannel I keep hanging on my chair and took a walk, barefoot, braving the woodshavings and other ridiculous stuff that accumulates on the balcony.  The sand was comfortably cool.  I picked up plastic bags and threw them away, wondering how anyone could still be using these things.  The sun was still below the rim of the teacup but you can tell where he will rise by the intensity of the light.  Dogs on leashes because they are naughty, dogs running free because they obey.  Neighbors avoid neighbors because it’s a hallowed time, this silent, molten rising.

Sleepless means I pulled on clothes and dragged my phone down to the ocean in case I saw something. I tried to capture the waves breaking behind the breakwaters, for the wind is north, northwest again.  The water and air seem to be the same temperature in my lungs and on my feet, but the wave breaks in my eyes are not the same as what my camera sees. That’s all right. I will wander back to my cave and think about things.

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Tales From The Mattress

26 Friday May 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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amwriting, brother, childhood, dragon, father, mother, sleepless, story

And there it was, through the struggle of the night, another long Goldilocks night where I’m too hot, I’m too cold, but oh, please, bring me just right….  I awoke in the middle of the night and remembered that story I used to tell myself when I was little.  Actually, I was telling my stuffed animals, for they were good listeners, but I am getting ahead of myself.

My brother and I went from cribs to bunk beds, nothing in between.  Brother got the bottom bunk which means I got the top.  It was so high up, though, and Mom was worried about me falling out of bed.  Dad had every Craftsman tool known to man (or at least it seemed that way to a little girl who liked following him around, wanting to help spackle or anything else he thought I was capable of doing.)  Dad brought home a ginormous piece of wood, longer than the bunk bed and thicker than a pizza box.  He drew lines and sawed the ends into curves, sanded, then he varnished the shit out of that thing which stunk to high heaven and set off my asthma, naturally.  When it was done, he fitted the smooth, dark wood piece over the edges of my bunk so that it would keep me from falling out during the night.

I accumulated stuffed animals over the years and I lined them up, just so, at the head of my bed.  They were my cabinet, my aides du camp, the only thing helping me through Godzilla / tornado dreams — or worse.  Mom used to read us bedtime stories like an orator on a stage, me high in the balcony.  I used to make up stories as I lay in the laps of my dear stuffed animals, and they listened.  And I remembered one of those stories last night.  You know.  It’s the one about the dragons.

My goal is to write the story today.  I don’t know what I will do with it when it’s done.  There are so many places I could hobble up to and beg they take my paltry thing and publish it.  But it all starts here. In my bed.  The place where I still sleep with dragons.

Sleeping, Unconservatively

25 Thursday May 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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angry woman, life, lightning, politics, rules, sleepless, woman

I peeled my sad, angry, frustrated clothes off and went to bed, though I still wore a layer of it on my face. It occupied some of my heart.  As I lay on my side and looked out the window I noted the orange sky.  That means weather. The kind that brings lightning. I can’t sleep when I know the lightning is coming, especially after that last storm that seemed to want to eat the Hampton roads. I was tempted to stay up all night so I could be prepared for the blast, no matter how long it would take for it to come, but I really wanted to sleep.  I chose to peel off my layers of anger, to turn over and breathe and meditate and pray and hope for relaxation to take over so I could sleep.  I chose to sleep, and I would deal with the storm, the adrenaline rush of fear that comes when a little girl sleeps in her bed and her parents crash the door… if and when it came.  Meanwhile, there’s nothing. i. can. do. about. it.  Any of it.

This morning I awoke, still wearing my angry face, sad to say.  I could feel it, stuck to me like a wet leaf but not so easily plucked off and cast aside.  Reading the news did not help.  Last night’s echoes still reverberate, that a politician assaulted a journalist who the hell knows why, and my fear that it’s only going to get worse.  More, I can’t stay quiet when I see a young woman who wants to graduate barred from the ceremony because she broke her “morality” pledge and got pregnant. I’m supposed to stay quiet when girls can’t wear braids in their hair or barred from a graduation ceremony because they’re pregnant.  Both schools have rules and mores, and both girls broke them.  The pregnant girl broke the contract she signed when she had sex outside of marriage and got pregnant. But the strength she showed in keeping her child and choosing to move forward with her life, to finish school and graduate shows a lot of backbone.  Or… maybe a lot of pressure from her parents and society?  Either way, she’s barred from graduation because she broke the morality rule, and all I can feel is sorrow for all of us.  I guess I should fall in line and feel solidarity for the rule, because if they allowed her to attend it would mean the school condones her behavior, and then cats and dogs living together.

I ruined my 5-star morality rating years ago, and I’m betting we all have some tarnish on our souls.  Here we stand punishing young people for an act as simple as wearing braids or as troubling as premarital sex which results in pregnancy.  I am an angry woman this morning because females should not be punished for wearing braids, or for carrying a child.  I am in no way a pro-life person, because, you know, I hate babies and life and I just want to sin and fuck and eat embryos with my grits.  But I am a pro-life person in that I can’t stand seeing injustice, even though they signed a contract.  The contracts and handbook rules that regulate dress code and morality are in place to keep young people in line, and boy do they need keeping in line, what with all the things they’re privy to on social media and lack of guidance from home.  I get it.  But the angry woman of me feels that black girls banned from wearing braids and pregnant girls cannot attend graduation that they earned crosses a line and really pisses me off.  I am sad for all of us as a society.

And don’t even get me started on the politician that body-slammed a journalist for asking a question.  I feel like we’re all just losing sight of things that should matter more than offensive t-shirts, weaves, and a young woman who chose life, which is ironically what conservatives want to preserve at all costs.

It’s almost noon, and I have to decide what my diet of the day will contain.  As I write, I am playing action movies in the background.  The angry woman of me needs to hear fire power and powerful soundtracks, a catharsis for me that elevates the idea of justice because I cannot be the iron hand to wield it.  I see justice and common sense diminishing in my country.  And there’s nothing.i.can.do.about.it.

Aw shit, what do I care.  If you sign a contract, you’re bound. You fuck up, you get punished. No graduation for you.  Just like a president, I guess….

Musings

14 Friday Apr 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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life, sleepless, strawberries, thoughts

Sleep paralysis is not a plot device used by some dark gods to fuck up my night, my morning, my life.  I know what it is now, and I can fix it. (Furthermore,  I really didn’t need to recall  the “Sad Keanu” meme. It’s a bullshit way to start the morning.)

I like my strawberries room-temperature. My mouth crackles as I eat them, and I am grateful for this pleasant stimulus today as I walk along the edge.

Jackie is due in three weeks, and all I can think is that time moves so slowly, and so fast.

I lit a candle to honor the grief of someone I do not know. It only makes me feel better.

I watch a tiny black beetle who barely fits inside a window screen square make his way here and there. What is he looking for?

He found a message in a bottle on the beach that holds a child’s pain.

I’m the priest in that story who never wanted to hear music again because it’s all just noise compared to the singing of angels he once heard.

Loud generators, the bump and clank of hand trucks moving sofas past my window, and a door slam are not plot devices used by some dark gods to fuck up my fragile mood and ambitions. It’s called life, lady. Better get used to it.

Sleepless In Virginia

05 Monday Dec 2016

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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amwriting, change, control, evolving, justice, peace, respect, sleepless

“Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise” — popularized by Benjamin Franklin

Sometimes I go to bed early because I just can’t stand another minute of being awake in this world. I set aside little projects, put my pretty glass of water on the shelf near the bed so as not to bother my neighbor with thirsty midnight wanderings that might creak on her ceiling, and hope to read until oblivion.  Sometimes it comes quickly, but most times not so much.

After looking back on the day, the days, the weeks, months, a lifetime, my mind cannot rest because it feels like all the things it wants to say, to shout, to megaphone, telegraph, all the change bonfires it wants to set or incite mean nothing.  Smug minds are sleeping cozy in their righteousness while I lie awake thinking about injustice, or tiny personal wounds or the greater ones that deforest this thing called humanity keep after me. I can’t sleep when everything feels so wrong, even while counting my blessings, acknowledging with deep, deeper gratefulness for all these things.  I am safe, warm, and fed in my bed grinding my teeth, feeling afraid for the future of your great grandchildren, and yes, still sorrowing for the vacancies, lapses, and longings in my own life.  I cannot sleep even though I count a rosary of gratefulness, though I delve down into breathing and the art of silence, hoping to form a memory palace, but the mental noise is still too great. I cannot sleep because I despair, wanting with a need so great it grinds sinews for I cannot go back and undo my mistakes.  That the world would be a better place if it would just listen to me and do as I say, because I am right, and the shock when I realize I’m no better than you are with that kind of controlling attitude.  I can’t sleep because I realize how wrong I have been, so all there is left to do is get up and write.

It’s hard to let go of despair when I realize that writing about peace, love, decency, honor, sacrifice, family, gratitude, amounts to what feels like a hilla beans. Hell, if it were a hilla beans at least it would offer a chance for somebody to plant and grow and share sustenance.   I feel like all I got now is Times New Roman type on a white page seen by few, something that provides no sustenance, in a world where women and children sift through garbage because it’s their normal, knowing if I introduced them to clean water in plastic bottles, grocery store food, amazon delivers  you things you didn’t know you wanted, media that tells you that you are unwashed and need to better yourself, that you need a constition and a militia to save you from poverty, perhaps I am the crazy one, and you were better left in your simple, scavenging life.    I can’t sleep because the things I want to say to people who do not matter conflict with the things that do. I can’t fix the whole world though I want to, like it’s my job or something, and I’m trying to figure out the best way to make my shade satisfied in the end. Perhaps no shade goes to rest satisfied?  Or perhaps they all do because they know that this earthly, mortal mess in between mighty fields of beautiful ain’t nothing but a thang.

I need to sleep in the dirt and drink from a stream and walk farther than I meant to because I am not a resident of this land.  I need to sleep beneath great black blankets of night and peeping stars, flashing skies that observe me peeing behind a stand of trees because life is just so much better when it comes by the cupful. No one of us can right the tilt of the world, its temperature, its depth.  How can I convince the rest of the world that we can coexist, if only we respect?

Preparing for Matthew, Tentatively

05 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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hurricane, ocean, sleepless, USMC

Restless.  Sleepless.  Blame it on the wind? A restless mind?

It’s four in the morning and I cannot sleep. I drank water.  Took a shower.  Listened to the wind and can’t shake the feeling that something’s coming.  And it is.  It’s a strange place to be in on a Wednesday morning trying to decide what’s the best way to prepare for what has not happened yet, for what may or may not come. We have technology now that tells us what’s brewing and where, and I need all my tools to get focused, not stress out, and be ready. What can I do with the energy that must be flowing this way?

The Atlantic is a monster to the tiny people in its way, a swirling, churning beast. Our Marines are on the way to help those in the Caribbean with disaster relief, and I am proud that we are going to help.  But what about my neighbors, the young couple who don’t have enough money for a hotel room in case we have to evacuate? Take them, their baby, ferret, and cat with me? Oh no, her husband won’t go for that. Pride lives three doors down from me while indecision lives three doors down from them.

The desert island question arises. If I was stranded on a desert island and could only bring three books (or CDs), what would they be? I look at my books sitting quietly on soft mocha shelves and interestingly, surprisingly, they’re the last thing on my mind. Strange feeling, looking at rooms full of special things, knowing I’ll leave them behind in favor of water, food I can eat out of a can, and a hand-crank radio. Where is higher ground, how far will I need to go? Will my “things” be dry when I get home?

But I wanted to stay and “see.”  I wanted to stand on the balcony and hear the roar and see the pine needles get hurled through the air, how far will the water rise up and storm the land?  Will the Atlantic ask for Willoughby Spit back?  No, not this time, I am sure. How much longer will I remain here, preparing (or not) for what is mostly intangible at this moment?  The higher tides and higher wind gusts tell me something’s brewing.  And I can’t sleep.

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