April 18, 2020

April 18, 2020 

I slept through most of the day. I got up took the dogs for a walk, had some toast for breakfast with Lisa and then went back into the bedroom to read a paragraph and fell into a troubling but restorative sleep. Exhaustion, depression, I don’t know but I seemed to need it today so gave in right away. 

In my dreams, my friend Lauren visited us - I feel bad because I never got a chance to visit her before all this went down and now, we’ll who knows when we can share a drink with our friends? The unfortunate part of this dream is that I can do lucid dreaming - and while this dream was going on and Lisa and Lauren were chatting, I became aware of the situation’s impossibility - recognized I was in a dream and not really seeing my friend, so just felt the loss. My Fitbit ranked my nap as an 84 in good sleep (I seldom rank that high in normal sleep cycles) so while I can out Refreshed, I was also disappointed. 

In my waking life the highlights of the day included watching the artist Murakami’s Instagram Live story and a virtual poetry reading. I watched Murakami make his dinner in his tiny kitchen - Udon noodles, with broth and tempura from a favorite brand I can’t remember. It was such a humanizing experience. He talked of his 20’s drinking and getting into fights contrasted with his current self, older - finding it harder to be innovative, changes in his brain, and I felt I saw more of him than in any artist talk I have seen. Instagram has a reputation of artificiality as people edit their content and curate their brands. Sometimes though, it captures moments of honesty and vulnerability that I keep coming back for. Show me yourself and I’m there, show me your “brand” and I keep scrolling .

For the second week in a row Lisa and I tuned into the Red Hen Press’ poetry hour and was delighted once again. Most people shy away from poetry as something just too pretentious to endure, or involving too much work to decrypt some hidden meaning. But it’s power to capture a moment, a feeling, an experience you miss until you engage with it. Anyone dealing with their lack of productivity needs to hear Allison Jospeh’s poem on regret. Coming out of this I just want more. More of these captured moments of humor, wit, an insight. It makes me want to try my own hand at this medium to see what skill I may have - or at least play with it a little as it both intrigues and intimidates me. But for the moment, I will sleep on this and see how I feel in the morning.