Man with screens

Recently I’ve been waking up in cold sweats. I’m drenched. Wake up every hour on the hour. A couple of nights ago I woke up from dreams that didn’t make sense — of course they never do — but I’ve been so bothered by what my brain was doing. I haven’t drank any alcohol in over 72 hours, there’s no drugs other than alcohol — delicious highballs that is.

I’ll do my best to explain what I saw and felt waking up from that dream. My eyes were looking at computer screens and windows — there was no between, my eyes were the screens. The data going by so fast I couldn’t keep up, nor could I simply turn it off. Just windows of data and information, pictures, media, and of whatever my brain was deciding to dump at that time. The windows of my eyes were closing and opening with new data without any of my input or control. I sat up reeling from this feeling sitting at the edge of my bed. No one I could call — I’d sound crazy - I felt crazy.

Awakened and alert I started to take some moments and focus on it what the fuck was happening and it began to slow down. I had some water, I laid back down, but it still hadn’t slowed down enough for me to fall back asleep.

I didn’t want to look at any screens, but I also didn’t exactly want to keep staring at the ceiling. I tried to focus on my breathing - it was working, ever so slightly. I maintained a meditation for a bit. I picked up my tablet and looked for a book — almost any book. I have a habit of downloading samples of books that I’ll never finish. I spotted some fiction, but far more non-fiction - I had wanted to study a bit of Japanese Zen Buddhism before I arrived in Japan — I still had not cracked open those enough to reach more than a boring introduction where I quickly lost interest.

Then I arrived at a book, Where Every You Go There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn. I forget exactly when I got this sample of a book, but I started it. Just the titled helped me calm a bit more. As I started paging through it, I saw some art work of Mt. Fuji (which I have yet not visited). I began the introduction thinking that would bore me and next thing I know I had made it past the introduction to the beginning of Part One aptly named: The Bloom of the Present Moment, where I came upon a quote.

The quote read:

Only that day dawns to which we are awake - Henry David Thoreau, Walden.

I put started to read through further on to the chapter when I began to feel a little tired — I put the book down, and went back to sleep for a few hours. I will have to continue this book sometime, but it gave me all the info I needed in the introduction. I was calmer.

Image created by DALLE