Thursday, January 17, 2013

as I lay sleeping

Where did I go as I lay sleeping?
Nothing sexy or profound ... just where did I go?
It seems that I must have gone somewhere because when I wake up, there is a period of sweeping together all those shards of who I am or what I believe that went wherever they went as I lay sleeping.
Sweeping takes energy and the older I get, the less energy I have.
Sweeping up chores that need doing, plans that need planning, regrets that need regretting, pleasures that need recalling, explanations that need explaining ... a jigsaw puzzle that lay unattended and quite content as I lay sleeping now requires an effort: How else am I to create the picture of some mountain scene that a completed puzzle might depict?
It is as if some earthquake (minus the fear) had knocked all the books off the bookshelves and waking up entailed putting them back where they 'belonged.'
An orderly world.
Where did that 'order' go as I lay sleeping?
An ordered life makes some sense -- or anyway disorder can prove unpleasant -- but how sensible can it actually be when there seemed to be no need for order as I lay sleeping?
If all the sweeping together of shards and if all the positioning of jigsaw-puzzle pieces were not especially convincing or effective in the past, what makes me think that today's efforts will prove more useful today?
Sleep neither denies nor affirms the shards and puzzle pieces. It is, after all, just sleep. And it is restful.
I'm not asking all this with the sex-appeal insistence of some guru or shrink. It's just a quiet question to which I don't really expect the kind of answer that can do no better than fit into some approved or serene jigsaw puzzle:
Where did I go as I lay sleeping?

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