Sleepless Broken Things

Originally Posted Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Woke up far too early.  It may have been the moon, a full Hunter and a Blood Moon to boot.  Or it may have been simply the growing fears of the aged alone in bed feeling a certain emptiness and longing for a world that probably never was.  Memory is a terrible thing in that it exaggerates and eliminates and warps and confuses.  Not even the videotape can correct it, though it sure can shock it all to hell.  I napped with a friend recently.  She told me I needed a sleep clinic and one of those apnea machines, the things that look like they might deliver an anesthetic.  I'd be all for them if they did.  I'd wear one every night.  It is just difficult to sleep when you are not breathing unless it is the long sleep to which we all inevitably aspire. 

Waking at five, though, does give me a longer morning which I love.  I love mornings more than evenings perhaps because it is easier to be solitary without feeling so all alone, because you know that the day is coming and you can have little to no idea what to expect, hoping for something pleasant, hoping for something nice.  I am not certain that my mother has been waking up this way lately, and I worry about that.  Perhaps there comes a time when you wake without hope.  It is probably true. 

And so I made my coffee and put some things into the dishwasher only to discover that the door will not close.  I bought the dishwasher six months ago, I think, and got the same one my mother did that day, the cheapest one she could find in the store.  I thought I would support her and go with the hillbilly wisdom.  What difference could it make in a dishwasher?  I am finding out.  I've not liked the thing from the moment I washed the first batch of dishes.  Little things.  The heat is not enough to dry the dishes.  And now something as stupid as a latch that is internal, inside the plastic housing, something I cannot get to, cannot see to fix.  I will need to call the store from which I purchased it and hear the bad news.  Surely I will be buying something new.  This time, though, I will not buy a cheap one.  Nope.  Not this time. 

After sitting down to the computer to read the morning news, I heard the coffee pot beep.  Coffee ready.  Except--once again--the coffee had run all over the counter.  I have no explanation for it.  I have gotten pretty good at cleaning up the mess, but I think it is time to get a new coffee pot, too.  I have an expensive one that grinds the coffee beans.  I'm sure it will be even more expensive to replace.  It is the modern world, of course.  Nothing lasts. 

I feel like Willy Loman. 

Of course I am no expert, and as I say, memory is a crumpled, twisted thing, but it seems that appliances and light bulbs used to last a very long time.  It could be a matter of age, of course, in that I was young and a year lasted much longer then than it does now being relative to the amount of time experienced then and now.  But it seems that people did their jobs better all around.  I'm sure they didn't when I think back on the people my parents knew.  They were idiots, really, but they seemed more dedicated to their jobs.  Maybe it was because they'd been through the war.  But again, I can't judge it as I was young.  No, I'm sure I am wrong.  It is just that in reading the news online today, the amount of writing errors I came across were alarming.  Here are just two examples from CNN:

"Due to the statue of limitations. . . ."

"Among those who tested negative include are the brother of the deceased."

Oh, well, what can one do.  Life is full of spilled coffee and broken latches and sleepless nights.  But there are evenings of beautiful music, too, drowsy nights when everything just seems to drift away in a samba.  As e.e. cummings wrote, "sleep, wake, hope. . . and then. . . ."