It's 6:00 AM. What are you doing?

What started as a trip to the refrigerator for a bottle of water and a quick pre-morning ass scratch turned into an early morning romance, my creativity and I, alone on the couch, with no one watching.

For me, sometimes falling back asleep becomes this sort of futile effort; it starts with a barrage of thoughts, sort of like being stuck between two protesters on soapboxes a foot apart, screaming starkly contrasting opinions at each other through bullhorns.

Lot’s of this:



and not enough of this:



What do you do; sulk and watch TV? Sometimes, yes, but not this morning… and I’m hard pressed to call this sort of thing insomnia; I have no trouble falling asleep initially, it’s more along the lines of me waking up after 5 or 6 hours of sleep and my brain just chooses a bad time to talk; you know the drill, the cell phone rings, it’s an old friend, and the conversation goes, “I would love to talk, but I’m busy walking a tight rope over a vat of hot lava at the moment and I could really use the extra concentration right now, besides the balancing pole that you see all those circus people using to keep their balance is taking up all my hand space, so I’m attempting that patented squeeze my cell phone between my head and shoulder trick, it’s not working, and I’m starting to get a kink in my neck, can I call you back?” All of this, aside, falling back asleep seems like an easy enough task right?

Step 1: Close your eyes
Step 2: Go back to sleep

However, somewhere in between step one and step two, I find too many stray thoughts running rampant… or maybe they find me. It’s hard to say. Sometimes it’s worries; sometimes it’s just random thoughts:

I wonder if Bill Cosby likes jazz as much as he does Jell-o pudding?
It probably depends on how much Jell-o is paying him.
I miss the Cosby Show.
These sheets are cold.
Why didn’t I go to the bathroom before I got comfortable?
Pillows do fantastic things to my hair; it’s like a Christmas present every morning when I wake up.
What time is it?

This morning was no exception, so I went on a pilgrimage to the coffee pot, looking for answers. While on my trek, I found my cat’s tail by accident; it was sort of like braille for my foot because it was dark in the house; he was not pleased.

I settled on the couch with my cup of coffee and no cat (he was too busy sulking), and began running through a couple of free object writing exercises that I recently read about in a book by Pat Pattison called “Writing Better Lyrics”. Today’s object: polyester. Yeah, that was a tough one. However, it really hashed up some great memories from my childhood; I’m not sure if your grandparents had an affinity for polyester clothing, but mine sure did. They’re pretty fun exercises; you should try them sometime. I’m on the second chapter at the moment where he discuses the creation of interesting metaphors… I hope you had better luck sleeping this morning that I did! That's not to say that I'm not perfectly content with where I'm at right now.

“Good morning, starshine… the Earth says hello!”

~ Mike