As in awake. Got up. I’m drinking the early morning Sleepy Time tea iced. Actually it is as good iced as it is hot.

Had a dream about selling, wherein I am completely unprepared to go on a sales call. It was a perfect metaphor for what I did for much of my working career.

J is home from work. She is tired. Who wouldn’t be, if they got up at 3:30 AM?

Now I’m watching a stoppage in play in the West Indies vs India ODI from Guyana, of all places.

Life is good.

I have been up about two hours after getting 2 hours sleep. I made a pot of Celestial Seasonings Sleepy Time Herb Tea. I thought I would go a day without caffeine and see what happens.

There is still high drama performing in my head. I see being beaten or spanked as cathartic. There would this sadomasochistic psychodrama played out and I would be “normal” afterwards. “Purged” may be a more suitable word. We all go through life, I think, with these private dramas, our little stories. To an outsider, they mean nothing. To the person who is the star of that internal drama, they mean everything.

Maybe I should find a woman who likes perfume and makeup, who keeps a clean house. But that is most likely delusional thinking on my part. That’s the sleep deprivation speaking.

I fixed J’s lunch last night. She went to work this morning. I will see her later.

Right now, as I watch the street and tracks in Ashland, I notice how the street lights make the green leaves stand out, as joggers and walkers start their days. There is light on the pavement that reminds me of that Edward Hopper painting Nighthawks. But I don’t want to be reminded of Hopper, but rather of Raphael or Rembrandt, Rubens or van Eyck. Even Breughel would be better in line with my mood right now. I think of the Bible stories that meant the world to the medievals, like The Annunciation, the Baptism Of Our Lord, the Miracle At Cana. Jesus turns water to wine. We look at people eating in the middle of the night. No wonder we’re crazy. Go reread September 1, 1939 by W. H. Auden. Think of Nighthawks when you do.

Train #98, Northbound Silver Meteor just passed through. Today it is only a half hour late. That is almost on time.

I made hibiscus flower tea. If I could be some place else, it would be Jamaica or Cuba. The Cayman Islands, maybe, Little Cayman though.

Bedtime, yet again. I fantasize two lesbians take me to their bed, because maybe I am the one male they can and want to connect with. Vanity on my part? Of course. I hold no illusion that any thought I have is grounded in reality.

Remember.. Very rich people want us to accept the world they constructed. And the messes they made. Our consolations are gasoline and war stories, as if the bravery and suffering validate it all.

But I’m having trouble detaching. Maybe something exciting will happen, but I will be asleep and miss out. You’re never too old to think like a six year old.

So I woke around Two, after sleeping about two hours. I am sleepy again now. J has left for work. She will be through around 1100.

What else is there to say? Summer drags on, as it always does. When I was a kid, we would get the Sears Fall & Winter Catalog about this time. I would look at pictures of coats and boots and flannel shirts and know the season was approaching a change. It made the heat a little more bearable.

I feel the tears bottled up inside, for all who suffer. My cross is loneliness. The weight is unbearable at times, but I will get through. I think it is a disease of our time, like addictive behaviors.

Back to bed.

When I was a lad, those many years ago. I had a “pen pal”. His name was Werner and he lived in Mannheim, then in the Bundes Republik Deutschland, or West Germany. Mannheim is on the Rhine. I don’t know much else about the place.

I have no idea what happened to him, but I get the excitement when my favorite bloggers post a blog,or leave a comment on my blog. Marvelous excitement. I feel like I’m understood.

Sometimes when one of my posts exposes what I perceive as a vulnerability, like a sexual memory and it is “liked” or commented on, I feel particularly validated. The awful truth is I don’t feel loved. I know cognitively, I am. I have a good marriage, especially compared to my earlier nightmares, I mean marriages. I’ve posted this before. I’m just feeling that invalidation again.

So I went to bed at 7:00 PM (1900 Hrs). And I slept a solid five hours. Then lay in bed another hour. Finally I climbed out of the rack, dressed, and came downstairs to fix J’s lunch, a reprise of yesterday’s lunch.

Now I’m watching a WW Two newsreel/training film. It is something I have never seen before.They would show the films to show to soldiers in training camps.

I’m thinking about going back to bed. I was watching some sexually explicit videos, lesbians making love. They look like people, not silicone androids. It’s the faces I find most interesting; the faces show the emotion, the feeling. The bodies are interesting when they are real, imperfect. I have been watching pornography, reading pornography for over fifty plus years. I find it simultaneously appealing and appalling. It is a metaphor for my loneliness. There are encounters with true beauty, when the couples “connect”. When I watch, it’s the humans I see. Maybe I’m a creep. Oh well.

Almost Three now. I will have another cup of hot tea before I go back to bed. If it is too cold, it will be the makings for the day’s iced tea.

The day seems better than yesterday already.

Sometimes I have to detach from the pettiness of life, from the need to “win”, from the internal validation of being right.

I’m feeling that right now. I will see posts in my feed from bloggers with whom I’m certain I will disagree. And my comments don’t matter. They don’t care what I think or if I challenge them, they will dig in their heels, ever more inflexible. There is no movement, no real dialogue.

Meanwhile, while I was out on my day excursion yesterday, Australia took a commanding lead in their innings at the first of the Ashes Tests. The English have a target of 398 runs. We shall see what they can do.

When J was getting ready for work around 3;30, I woke up. Not I can’t get back to sleep. The caffeine from the pot of coffee doesn’t help. The cricket commentators are having a technical discussion above my knowledge of and limited grasp of the game. But it’s a sunny day in Birmingham, so it’s not all that important.

I should make the effort to go back to sleep. But I sit here, in awe of this boys’ game that became the glue of Empire.

I could go back over to YouTube, to watch war time newsreels, or trains, or strippers. But the partnership of Jason Roy and Joe Root has my attention, more than newsreels. Or sleep.

I had this frenzy of activity fixing J’s lunch. She likes the Waldorf Chicken Salad I prepare, so I made a batch, dicing the chicken breast and red delicious apple and adding raisins, currants and slivered almonds. I bind it with mayonnaise. I sliced strawberries for her. With hummus and a Sargento Balanced Break, she should be in good shape.

I cleaned up. Now I’m sitting, tired again.