The Gentle Solitude Of Sleep

The cursor is blinking and the page is blank.

The day comes back to me in snippets and chunks.
There was a lot of driving: Kaia to sewing. Us to Wild Honey. Back to get Kaia. Back home. Skye to birthday party. Lots of time on the highway.


At one point I was blasting Siamese Dreams and Mellon Collie to Kaia as we drove in silence. She seemed to enjoy it. Not sure how much she absorbed…

Emptiness is loneliness, and loneliness is cleanliness
And cleanliness is godliness, and god is empty just like me
Intoxicated with the madness, I'm in love with my sadness
Bullshit fakers, enchanted kingdoms
The fashion victims chew their charcoal teeth

…but I am hoping it was enough.

Had dinner at Artichoke with old and new friends. Put on the smile. Listened to the talk. Tried to join in. These communities and families we have created continue to grow and need tending. How did we get here? Where are we headed? Can I still tag along?

Now home. It is early(ish) Saturday night. An ice cold glass of water. Some Halloween candy and the promise of a few pages of fiction before the gentle solitude of sleep.

Superhero

Sometimes I think I might be a superhero.


For starters, I just ate an obscene amount of delicious fancy Vietnamese food, washed it down with some mojitos and polished it off with mango sticky rice. This meal was at the tail end of a day that started waking up at 6:00 am with about 3.5 hours of sleep. I worked with a group of 25 educators to help them join into teams and ideate a project that they hope to pitch tomorrow to the larger conference. We shared, discussed, gave feedback, conferred. I gave good suggestions and bad suggestions. I listened and said, “I have no idea, but good luck.”


The session felt like my classroom. The learners were doing their thing and I did my best to navigate between getting in their way and leaving them stranded. There are some pretty great ideas and like a proud teacher, I can’t wait to see them come to fruition in coherent pitches tomorrow.


After the conference we headed back to District One, sitting in an hour long traffic jam in the rain and HCMC madness. It is now 9:35- teeth brushed, this post written, an episode of Full Frontal, the satisfaction that I still got it, and a long sleep into the darkness.


I can hear the cars honking outside my window and can imagine the chaos, and some sick part of my brain is saying, “get your closes on and go see what might be up,” but at least I am smart enough tonight to ignore that voice.