Morning Early Morning Thoughts

I awaken too often in the too early morning hours and cannot return to sleep. I do not suffer from too much pervasive anxiety—well, no more than I have slept through for much of my life. I am not troubled by nightmares: the daytime possesses more than enough, and I am psychically unafraid of dissolution. I may suffer bad dreams but they are of my own devise and they do not frighten me or keep me awake. And though I have much to look forward to upon arising, it is not restless anticipation of the day that keeps me from my slumber. When I awaken in these too early mornings and cannot return to sleep it is my memory that is too active. I review not the day but the years. My life appears as slides on a screen, not too carefully ordered or edited, but the scenes are all familiar; in the review there exists a certain calm. These things have happened and they are no more; yes, I suppose, in my daily life the consequences of the past remains, but I possess little capacity to change the smallest detail—only a perception here and there, perhaps—but the cathectic energies that once were attached to the events no longer have power in the present to possess very much influence at all, and I am not kept troublingly awake with my remembering.

There is in the memory no regret, but neither does their inhere any jubilation. I am kept awake merely because I can’t seem to shut off the slide show. I try to distract myself by ruminating upon the books I am reading, but the images blur all of the phrases. I try to focus on my breathing, but I am neither out of breath nor breathing irregularly. My mantras are cut off before they mesmerize. I remain wide awake with my eyes closed.

It is not an unpleasant sensation, this early, early morning wakefulness. Sometimes the brilliance of the full moon lights up the bedroom and the house casts a shadow against the trees outside my window. I turn my head towards the dark beneath the covers. And at the best of these moments, I just welcome the time.