A Little Light for the Night

Finally, the weather changes.  I had my heater on for the first time Monday as low temperatures went down to fifty degrees.  The sky is clear blue, the light diamond bright.  And the cat, who has slept out day and night all summer, won't leave the house.  Yesterday, I actually got to wear two layers.  Maybe now the madness will end.  Sure it will.

Now I must prepare for a trip to the coast to see my mother's relatives.  I will spend three or four days living with other people and having dinner with some I have not seen for a couple years.  It should be fine.  There is a beautiful little downtown area and what used to be an upscale shopping square by the water, and there are beautiful beaches and bookstores and a tremendous Cuban place where I love to sit at the bar and eat.  I look forward to it in many ways.

But poor pus-pus.  She will live with heartbreak.  I worry for her now.

What is there to talk about but food and drink and environment and weather?  Oh, there are the emotional states, too.  And there are the inherent dangers of our time.  If you write every day, you realize the paucity of subjects and despair when you can't write intimately and wonderfully about them again and again.  Perhaps I should resort to anagrams and poetry.

I've been asking around to see if I am the only one who falls asleep terribly early now that the darkness has come.  I am not.  I felt guilty about my nine-ish bedtime, but there are many others who have fallen prey.  I've given in and don't mind a bit.  Not at all.  In truth, I like it.  And when I wake in the night, I have taken to getting up and drinking a glass of water, turning on a dim and hidden lamp, and lying back down thinking not to sleep but just to relax.  And I fall back to sleep every time.  The little lamp must give me reassurance and comfort in the dark.  I know that light is not good for sleeping, or at least that is what I have read, but I find it impossible to quit thinking the awful things in the dark and that my thoughts and dreams become much more pleasant in the half-light, more innocent and childlike.  Some nights, I get nine hours of sleep which seems a miracle itself.  If you are suffering from something similar, I'd suggest you try my remedy.  Sometimes, too, I will put on a jazz station that is barely audible, but only if it is near time to get up.

Last night with the heater kicking on and the big quilt covering me and the half-light barely showing the room, I sunk deep into the mattress and felt. . . something.  Perhaps, as it has been said, all it needs is a light for the night.

I have much to do in preparation for tomorrow's departure, and so I will get to it.  The benefit for you, I hope, will be some new photography.  If I am lucky. . . we shall see.