Cake or Sleep?

Today I have tried to give up the idea of sleeping like a normal person and embraced the idea of just falling asleep when I get tired. It doesn’t feel right yet. Sleep is for night and work is for day. I’ve not been much of a daytime sleeper. I felt as if I were wasting time. I used to anyway.

I tried to take it easy today. Prepare myself for the anticipated feeling of sleepiness. Not tiredness. Got that in spades…I mean that wonderful feeling you get when you hate to put the book or the pencil down, but, really it’s just too late. It’s time to shut the light out. I used to fall asleep within moments and vaguely remember my dream when I woke up at 6 am. I’d be still, not even roll over or open my eyes. I’d lie there thinking about it. If you think too hard it will fade completely. Knowing it was a good, odd one. Something about a scarf. With an apple. In a sandy parking lot with sun beating down. A market…a tent? It’s gone. So you get up to make coffee.

Lately though, it’s not like that. I dream I’m awake in my dream. I’m holding a long gold necklace in the backyard of my house in Canal Flats. It’s exactly as if I am there. My Dodge is there. Budo is sitting on the porch rail. The lawn needs mowing. I want to keep the necklace. I can feel it in my hand and I know I’m going to wake up any moment. I wrapped it around my hand and picked up a black and white rock from the ground. In each hand I held something tightly. Naturally they weren’t there when I woke up. I was upset. Lucid dreaming is upsetting.

So I sleep too lightly and wake too easily. So.

Tonight I went to my brothers birthday party. I drew him a card and gave him watercolor paper. It wasn’t much but what the hell. Liza made a raspberry Genoise cake filled with the sugar free raspberry jam I made on Sunday. Just a little sugar. No leavening. No oil. A flat crisp cake made with eggs and cocoa and flour and when it’s baked, you slice it in 3 flat rounds and layer raspberry and pour a boiled icing over it. Delicious. Low sugar, low gluten and it still looks and acts like birthday cake.

We sang happy birthday at a decent tempo, so it doesn’t sound like a dirge. I hate that, when people sing the birthday song so slowly. Richard made my favorite chemo dish. That’s what I call it. Shredded Brussels sprouts, walnuts, loads of roasted garlic slightly sautéed in California olive oil. So good. I could eat the whole pan.

Hummus, too. I crave hummus. Saw some on A blog here last night and couldn’t stop thinking about hummus. This afternoon I ate veggie dogs with sauerkraut. Sigh…and I love a good sausage. Oh well. Nothing is going off the planet.

Talked with Richard about art. Nice art, pretty art like Vermeer vs dark art like Goya. Does it have a place in the home? Where? Would it be depressing or uplifting? Would a picture of a beautiful woman meditating under a cherry tree drive you crazy? It would me. Even landscapes can have darkness and chill without being depressing. Andy Warhol car crash series are brightly painted and chilling.

Food for thought. I’m going to make a list do the art I would want to look at. And where.

I think it’s time to turn off the light. I swear I’m tired.