Canvas and Music

I couldn't sleep last night. It is dark so early now that I fall asleep on the couch, wake up, go to bed, then wake again at three or four in the morning. As I lay in the dark last night, I felt the big hollow emptiness surrounding me. Then I started to think, and thinking, of course, is no way to get back to sleep. After flopping around for some time, I got up and put on music, the stations I created in Pandora (if you don't know about this, you are missing something wonderful). I didn't go back to sleep, but thinking to music was much better than thinking in the cold darkness alone. Thinking to music, I realized, is like dreaming, your body and mind beginning to synch to the notes and rhythms. My thoughts were much more tolerable and the room was warmed. And just before daylight, I fell back to sleep.

Last night, before bed, I stepped outside to get some camera gear out of my trunk. I had stored a canvas backdrop there, and the odor of it was pleasant. Standing there, I got a chill and remembered spending so many nights like this on my sailboat.

I would go over in this weather and sleep alone in the small cabin. Outside there was the wind and the cold and the giant hollowness I felt between me and the stars. In the cabin below, there was only the cold. I would light a lantern and though it was impossible, it seemed to warm the cabin somewhat. I would get inside my down sleeping bag and read and drink until the words began to dance on the page. I would sleep under that great hollowness and dream strangely, big round dreams that did not seem close to me but separated by some great arc. I was lonesome and melancholy then in a way that seemed to have some promise of relief. I longed for my own true love. On the boat, life was not easy and there were things that could not be avoided, that had to be done. All comfort contracted to the inside of that bag, though the dreaming was far above on the long reach of that protracted radius.

That is what came back to me as I opened my trunk in the breezy cold. I wanted to get back inside where life was comfortable, but I also wanted to have the guts to stay outside where living takes more effort. There was a fire flickering in the fireplace, however, and good food and drink. I am afraid that I have become weak and addicted to the warmth.