My bed is sublime. The mattress is a Tempurpedic which is covered
by a foamy, soft cover that I just melt into.
The sheets are high thread count cotton, and the quilt is baby-blanket
soft and cool. Four fat pillows float
around atop the mattress for cuddling and propping and burying. I wake up in the morning and think about
getting up, then fall back asleep for a bit. Then again.
Then again. Getting up has become
somewhat of a chore. I’ve made my bed a
bastion of comfort so that I won’t have to get out of it, because there is
nothing really to get out of bed for.
So then
my utopian cradle becomes a black hole. Even
after I manage to tear myself out of it, I find myself returning over and over throughout
the day, falling into a position of repose, as though I have done something worthy
of rest. When I’m working (obviously) I
can’t simply fall back into bed, because I’m at work; but when summer rolls
around, and the heat takes the fun out of the outdoors, here I am. Again and again.
I
mostly lie in bed and think; I don’t sleep.
Sleeping is too easy and not a thing neurotic people do very well. No, we like to think about all the things we could or should be doing rather than lying in bed staring at the wall, but
the idea of actually doing any of
those things is utterly exhausting to me.
What if I had a partner or friend to lie in bed with and plan whatever
things people plan? I could go make a
friend, but that’s exhausting. Where
would I look? Wouldn’t that require
getting dressed and getting out of bed?
I could write a book. If only I
had something … a plot, perhaps.
In
truth, I do a lot of work later in the day:
planning for school and reading books and making notes and plotting
things out. Will I remember all the
brilliant insights and nuances once school starts again? Probably not.
Will the students care about all those little moments of sheer brilliance
that Scott Fitzgerald and others have laid out for us? Not really.
But I can at least enjoy them myself in the interim and delude myself
temporarily that I can share them with others.
Perhaps a book club?
Unfortunately, most of the people I know don’t read for pleasure. A most ridiculous non-habit, if you ask
me. No wonder America is in jeopardy of
becoming one of the dumber countries in the world. Just read one of the more “popular” books of
the last few years (Twilight, Hunger
Games, Fifty Shades of Gray) – as entertaining as those books may be, they
are written at about a fifth grade level.
But I digress…
If I
could only harness my thoughts, organize them in some capacity. But my bed is too convenient. It’s always there to absorb me and allow me
to drift off into the idleness of thought. You see, I thought about thinking, and then I
moved over to my computer and wrote about thinking, and now I’m going to force
myself to get dressed and do a series of things which make me feel as though my
life is not a complete waste.
Unfortunately, those things will end up being cleaning or working out,
neither of which changes the world.
One
morning, I’m thinking it will happen around 11:11am, an idea will spontaneously
sprout into my head, and it will be brilliant.
I will follow it and make it wonderful and then travel the world sharing
it with others. Until then, the cool
cotton will call me back to revel in uselessness.
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