So said the poet Theodore Roethke. And so say I. The body wakes bit by bit, first bladder, then brain but not yet the bones. Bones speak by yawns. Stretch a leg, change position and listen to your lonely bones.
It is six something. I know that from the light with a lid half open. I am enough
awake to not only think but also to dream. An intoxicating time when the river
of thoughts and images flows freely without any sentinels at the gate. The trash
of consciousness and the treasure of the subconscious mingle. They come as
shards, unfinished symphonies, a torrent of what ifs in the floating world.
The name for this period when creative juices bubble best is called hypnagogic time.
Maybe it’s the hour when synapses frolic with neurotransmitters in naked
exuberance. Greens and blues marry into teal. The meaning of life is glimpsed
and then flies away eluding the net.
I stay put for two hours, plus or minus. A flotsam of dreams
surface. The stream also comes with a certain clarity of vision. Unsolvable
problems reveal their solution. If I had my druthers, I’d remain in this Xanadu
but my bowl of frozen berries and granola calls. Not that I am hungry but I must eat so I
can have an appetite for my lunch date. Besides, I have never understood what druthers
are.
What survives in this post-prandial state is dubious. If I had
written down my small epiphanies, it might have broken the spell and maybe that’s
the way it works. A brief glimpse is all we are granted. Full consciousness
seems to extinguish that brief candle which illuminated the cave wall. The magic
carpet is still in the dry cleaners. The banana is no longer a goldfinch and that dialectic of great ideas clashing was only a garbage truck grinding its weekly meal.
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