2 Hours Sleep...

Lord behold, trials upon man cease not for the virtuous and kind, not that I am virtuous or kind, nor am I being tried by the lord. Rather I am a victim of my own insomnia. Despite scratchy eyes of sand paper, dry throat, fatigue and incoherence, my mind forbade sleep at all costs.

I tried reading philosophy. I drank microwaved milk. I watched infomercials. I meditated. I stayed in bed with the lights off for an hour straight. I watched part of The English Patient. I read Emily Bronte. I listened to classical music. But what worked? Three shots of vodka.

The sun was rising and so was my temper. I passed out with a buzz and listening to the birds chirping. Two hours later I was awake and getting ready for work. If I had a gun I would've shot that vile alarm clock, beeping my consciousness from such a precious slumber.

Now, after finishing my second cup of coffee and drinking an iced tea, I foresee the inevitable caffeine crash. Of course I will attempt to ward it off by ingesting more and more caffeine, which of course will keep me awake during the night and subsequently cause me to take another three shots of vodka.

Where would I be without the potent nectar of potato? I would probably doze off on the road coming from or going to work, lose control of the vehicle, veer off into oncoming traffic and slam head on into a semi. I should give much thanks to the auspicious potato.

I plan on erecting a monument to the potato upon my dresser. The monument will be constituted of a Mr.Potato head, with arms raised toward the heavens from which it came, eyes ablazen with the passion of Aries, a smile so loving it would rival Prometheus' towards man, a boulder hat of such divine proportions for even the golden ratio couldn't compete, plastic shoes of a bluish hue so soothing it would calm the furies themselves, ears so majestic and austere that they can only be offset by the boldness of his eyebrows and moustache, and finally a nose so red that one is instantly reminded that he is the icon to the mystical vodkarian nectar. Mr.Potato Head will stand upon a stack of books; the Bible, the Koran, the Lotus Sutra, the Upanishads, the Talmud, the Vedas, the Illiad, the Odyssey, and the Complete works of Hunter S. Thompson (although his drink of choice was wild turkey).

I shall make a commitment to drizzle vodka upon this shrine during each sleepless night, in thanks of its pleasant post-consumption side effect. There is a good reason why alcohol is metabolized in the liver before all else. It takes priority as the greatest cure for insomnia, back pain, tooth ache, bee sting, pre-mortem depression, uromisotysis poisoning, lucifericious paranoia, jehovian infatuation, guilt, pride, happiness, sadness, good, evil, highness, lowness, and a variety of other maladies of non-descript categorical classifications.

Although maladies should be greeted with a degree of reverie. Every day millions of people in the world get sick. To be a part of that population is to be a member of the most consistently changing, ever-present, most notable group ever. How many people can say, "I was a member of a group consisting of a hundred million members that may not retain membership for more than a week"? What is more exclusive than that. Everything. That is what makes it so special. Foreign dignitaries, men and women of the highest social stratum are all blessed to become members of this group and yet, even the most lowly of person can join. It is the most equitable group in the history of microbiology. True, the lower spectrum is more likely to join from authentic initiation, however the upper spectrum, despite their surplus of resources, often is initiated by the power of mind alone. These many affluent members join for reasons of attracting attention, illiciting pity and inducing guilt. What greater collective assemblage has such colorful and, indeed, potent contrasts. One should feel honored to be a member.

Furthermore, color, potency and contrast are all the more sensitive to one fortunate enough to be exposed to, starved of and, indeed, privy to sleep deprivation, REM and the intrigues derived from the insomniosyncratic neurolythic oligomorphisos dynamis mania, respectively. But while the rigidity of mind, fused by the deprivation of proper slumber, melds the few into one powerful insanity, the sheer lack of any guiding force sends one on ever increasing elliptical spirals on tangents from both center, stern and perimeter, without the cold and sterile restrictions imposed by barrier, reason (or as the French say 'raison' not to be confused with the dehydrated and pitiful long term consequence of the bulbous growth protrusions from the vitis vinifera) and pride.

But from what depths does pride arrive? Does it not come from the same location, or juxtapose, or adjunct to, immoral baselessness? And if so then the very nature of true quixotic love, is then metamorphosized into a pseudo-philo-cacophony, not worthy of even the most loathsome and degenerate neophyte. But what worth is inferred on the basis of deduction, induction or reduction? Nothing! Value resides in the cost benefit analysis of advantage over incurred incrementation of the death vector.

The death vector itself, a constantly deviating and incidentally avoided path of horrid ambiguity, is indeed a primary factor in insomniatic motivation. Why sleep when sleep is so similar to death. Fortunately the consciousness field of man has a radius that seldom if ever breaches the conceptual barrier of the said ideological intrigue. So curvatures and sinuous journeys become the norm for those that see far enough to know when to deviate. Regrettably, the social opinion of such warped personas is adverse if not antagonistic. They jeer and browbeat to the rhythm of sirens and church bells. But the veil never fully covers the eyes nor obscures the lucid images of what should be avoided.

This veil is what most people consider the cover and protective film of the civilized world. Rather it is the rails from which one must ride off the cliff. Which cliff is known only to those that jump from the train itself. Most desist from entertaining the possibility that the rails may guarantee derailment, however, doing so at their own peril, they commit to the uniformity of the plateau ideology.

This plateau ideology allows it's subscribers to refrain from worry and leave the worry to the rails and the momentum to the machine. They readily sleep soundly and furbish the world with well rested, even minded, automatons that follow orders and get the job done on time, on schedule and to code. They are willingly force fed and prescribed a diet of pharmaceutical aphorisms and a narcotic creed that enhances certainty while it dulls the accuracy.

And that creed is the core of the sleep ethic. That is why I cannot bring myself to embrace that ephemeral and, yet so essential, torpid activity. So two hours of sleep leads to such dementia of Syd Barretesque proportions, any other result would foment the very revolution of determinism and the abandonment of hope of logic, mathematics and, indeed, cause and effect.

So until I rest....
Foregone forbearance for forbidden foreboded forests..........