I didn’t sleep well. This is nothing new. I woke up at 2-ish and again at 4. I had to force myself back to sleep at 4. I then had a dream about an ex. We had reconnected and were trying again, but had already fallen into the same pattern / trap that was problematic the first time around. I wanted to spend more time together than she did. An entire weekend had passed by in which neither of us had any plans, but we didn’t make any plans together. This felt like a missed opportunity, and because it was an issue before, I had been intentionally keeping my distance or backing away or… I’m not really sure what – it was a dream and lacked specificity. I woke up feeling bummed and hollow – the disconnect felt real. It’s the focus of my 52 words for the day:
Gutted from a dream about a person I once loved, I couldn’t tell if I was hungry or the opposite of hungry. I ate. I wrote. We were trying again with less effort – same conflict. I woke hurt, disappointed. No details, just feelings – slippery like minnows, and me with clumsy hands.
I’m still trying to figure out what to do with and how to present this new mini project of 52 words observations. Maybe it’s a new category on the blog – in which case I’ll need a title. I’ve thought about using jetsam or flotsam and jetsam… but it really isn’t wreckage, and I don’t care for the word jetsam – it sounds too much like ejaculation, which I suppose might be an apt description of the project – a daily spewing forth of 52 words. I don’t want to call it morning thoughts or observations or contemplations or… because for all I know I might write at night or in the afternoon. In some respects, it’s a little like the time I practiced painting an enso circle every day – a type of small meditation…. but in order to get each one to 52 words, there’s quite a bit of wrangling and massaging and the enso is one stroke without concern about perfection or outcome. I also don’t know what switching WordPress themes will do to the layout… I have some categories that never took off (Memphis, Live Music) – I should probably convert them to tags and clean up the top menu… all of which is boring stuff, but bogging me down.
Last night, while walking to a bar for dinner, I passed by a tree/shrub that looked like it had small orange berries growing on it. As kids, my brother and I (and a bunch of neighborhood kids) would pick these berries (a word that doesn’t quite fit because they’re not very soft). There was a tree/bush behind a friend’s house where they grew. We used them as ammo for our homemade slingshots. At night, we would try to shoot the bats that flew around in the field next to our house. We never hit any, and quite often, the bats would dive after the berry we had shot. The slingshots were made from a thick coat hanger undone and snipped short, and bent into the shape of a field goal post. We used two sturdy rubber bands, and a small patch of bike inner tube. I’m pretty sure I could still make one today. I texted my brother about the berries – he immediately remembered and said a story like that would be so foreign to his kids.
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I just got back from the morning walk with the dog – a short one. He’s picked up a funny habit these past few weeks. He stops just after the end of the driveway near a group of trees where he bites a leaf off of a weed. It’s the same weed every time. I always give a slight tug on the leash and he moves on. It’s like it’s his after meal mint or something like that. Same spot, same weed, one leaf and then we move on.
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I should probably stop here and switch gears. Admittedly, I’m not feeling up to whatever the day might present. I don’t know if it’s a hangover from the dream, or just being tired, but it’s hard to put meaning or urgency behind my afternoon meeting or anything else I might need to get done. It’s as though I’m not fully present.