THE GIFT OF INSOMNIA

Normally when I wake up and it's dark outside it's the biggest drag ever.

I've been doing this since I was a little kid and it's why I totally understand those references to the Dark Night of Soul, because when I wake up in the dark, in those too early hours to even call your friends who live three hours ahead of you, I tend to engage in catastrophic thinking. It's not like the waking up when you have to pee and your body take you on auto-pilot to the bathroom and then you crawl back in bed and resume sleep. This is an awake that is totally alert as if someone flipped a switch and the brain turned on.

And it's dark.

And I'm awake.

So after I lay there and toss and turn and try to force somnolescence to come back I usually start to think thoughts. Thoughts about how weird it is that I'm in this physical body that I seemingly have no control over sometimes and how life is strange and what's going to happen to me and this isn't at all how I thought things would turn out, you know, that I would be laying in the dark in some random apartment in Los Angeles wondering what the hell it's all about and what is that noise? What really goes on in the alley behind the building when I'm asleep because there's a lot of activity out there in the dark.

I stress out a lot about how I'm going to have to get up and function in a few hours and make it through a whole day on about 4 hours of sleep and then I stress out about how they say that stress and a lack of sleep makes you fat and I wonder if I should get up and go for a walk since I'm awake, but it's freaking dark out there and there are noises and I don't feel like getting dressed. If I lived in a neighborhood where I felt safe getting up and putting and walking around in my bathrobe I would probably stress less about the whole getting fat thing.

Anyway, this morning? When my eyes flew open at 4 o'something, my first thought was shitfuckgoddamn, but then I remembered something! I turned and pulled the curtains back and there it was - a full lunar eclipse in progress. About half the moon was covered by a black disk of shadow and the moon seemed all that much brighter by contrast. I had to put my glasses on to see how crisp the shape actually was and I laid there and watch the moon emerge from the darkness as it set in the western sky.

It was so incredibly cool and this morning I was truly grateful for that fucking bitch Insomnia.

The Unbearable Likeness of Being

Things are moving along lately. I have been getting my ass back into the swing of exercising and this will make a post a month for three months in a row! You gotta find the positive where you can.

I'm nothing if not all about emphasizing the positive.

Adi and I were talking about endings before new beginnings and I pointed out that every day ends. He said that's why he doesn't like going to sleep.

Me? I prefer to pop an Ambien and look forward to what's next.

We are very different in our respective perspectives.

This got me wondering about whether or not the Jewish/not Jewish thing was underlying that difference. I grew up with so many friends who were Jewish and never noticed the stereotypes that are so often bandied about, like the worry and the, let's call it "thrifty" thing and the overbearing mothers utilizing guilt like a cattle prod to get their families to do their bidding.

Ever since I've met Adi's mother though it's like I've walked into some bad joke told by Shecky Green at a camp in the catskills.

I mean Oy Vey, seriously.

It's insidious the kvetching and complaining and it's permeated my life. I find myself being pulled into that energy instead of the carefree, barefoot running around without a sweater that I was raised to enjoy.

And here's what I know right now, this minute, and that is that this nice Jewish boy that I like so much will never have a successful relationship with any woman until he breaks up with his mother.

Which would most likely kill her and then the guilt would kill him.

So you see where I'm going with this...

And all I can say is that if you're a shiksa and you've met a nice Jewish boy - don't go there - unless he's an orphan.