Midnight Musings

Herbert is trying to quit smoking, and in an effort to allay murderous thoughts of anguish, irritability and desperation, he went to bed at 9pm. I, a goodly wife if ever there was one (by my standards), chose to knock off to bed with him in sympathy.

But sleep would not come, so I did a breathing exercise a janitor by the name of Ulysses taught me when I was 25 (Ulysses also dispensed general advice pertaining to bowel regularity, how to alleviate migraines and how to defuse stress). He was a coffee colored hulk of a saintly and articulate man, and I never for the life of me understood how or why he was a janitor and not Andrew Weil.

When Ulysses' breathing exercises failed to work (Herbert was, of course, fast asleep by this time), I tried to play a movie in my head from beginning to end. I selected Ben-Hur (Chuck Heston version) but immediately realized that I couldn't remember anything except the scene where Chuck finds his sister and mother at the leper colony and makes that special Heston grimmace of pain because he feels bad. This immediately brought to mind Soylent Green, and Heston's chest heaving out of a khaki button down as he made the revelation--you know the line. But THEN, I could remember nothing more about the film, but did remember that when Soylent Green first aired on TV, I watched it with a male cousin who showed me his pre-pubescent junk. This, oddly, activated a series of mental flash cards with images including 1) a translucent purple skateboard I once owned but didn't know how to ride, but had purchased because a boy named David Obernesser had one when I was 11, 2) the time I vomited Tropicana on the living room rug, 3) that awful flash demon image from The Exorcist (wide awake by this time).

So next, I decided to exit the bedroom quietly so as not to awaken Herbert from his smoke-free slumber, but became disoriented in the dark room, and ended up in a strange part of the room nowhere near the door. Subsequently banged my foot on the wardrobe, waited for Herbert's startled breathing to return to normal (blindly staring into the dark, and listening intently), and then inched my way along the wall until I found the exit.

Now, here I sit, wide awake with 2 dogs, 1 cat, a deep desire to somehow shut my brain down.