i used to just be roused from my sleep slightly before the cusp of daylight. not to pee or from a bad dream. just some strange undecipherable working of my body clock.
i thought then it was my body'’s quirky way of telling me to pore over my homework for the day. i was then in high school and to be on the honor roll was not looked down as the geeky pursuit that now it is. in fact, it was sort of hip to be on that roster.
and so i dragged myself out of my torpid sleep and hunker down to mostly my algebra problems. in the early morning light, i remember the x's and y'’s squirming on the page like scared wrigglers in a trough full of standing brackish water.
i have no recollection when this punishing rote stopped. must be when i started doing late nights. mostly from dipping into books i am not supposed to read. yet. nothing illicit here. just titles not on the required reading list.
i don'’t know why i have to burden myself over and over with stuff insignificant and better left forgotten from my childhood. if and only if they were left that way, irretrievably lost in my memory. but nothing ever is, somehow.
this morning, on a weekend morning that i am not supposed to be doing anything, here i was all tingly from my wakefulness. raring to do something.
outside, the rain, the lazy rain that started last night has persisted. and the slight, somewhat slick film of rain water that has accumulated on top of the garage behind my building undulated from the soft morning wind.
and for a moment there, i thought i saw a piebald cat, no a calico, thrashing in the rooftop pond. it couldn'’t be, i assured myself. cats abhor water.
maybe, it’'s just a memory of mine. a memory of first reading annie dillard. of her old fighting tomcat who would jump through the open window by her bed in the middle of the night and land on her chest.
on some nights, she wrote, her cat would knead her bare chest with his front paws, powerfully, arching his back, as if sharpening his claws, or pummeling a mother for milk.
and on some mornings, she would wake in daylight to find her body covered with paw prints in blood; i looked as though i'd been painted with roses, she wrote.
these days, i am not flagellating myself to be on any honor roll. i am just happy enough to eke by a day without any mishap or taking any slight unforgotten to sleep.
and yet, somehow, my body, my system, puritanically raised by my arch achieving mother, is waking me up once again. rousing me to do stuff, dangerous stuff, i am not sufficiently skilled to do. not even the foolhardy moxie to try. like writing half as good, perhaps, as annie dillard.
in my dreams, i’'d say.
all i could come up is a post as hastily done as this, devoid of any compelling, literally visceral images. i wish i could just stop now. this delusion to write, this illusion that somehow i could come up with anything of import and beauty.
i wish i could just get back to the safety of sleep. and be awakened later by the mundaneness of the urge to empty my groaning bladder. or the more pressing need to retrieve the weekend paper by my building's door before some larcenous neighbor decides to appropriate it for himself.