3:14am

I've seen 3:14am on my Timex more times than I care to admit. It's become a bit of a sanctuary. It tastes like Pi. Sometimes I get up, other times 3:14 and I smile at each other and go back to sleep. See you in 12 hours. Sleep is sometimes a struggle.

There are a handful of writers who it seems a big deal to me when they have a new book out. W.S. Merwin is one of them. Our daughter Ava and I were book shopping after a good news doctor's appointment, and Merwin spoke to me from the shelf. He teased me with my current fascination for moons, still dark mornings, and blue. The Moon Before Morning. Well played Merwin.

He tells us, "the stars we consider have long been gone." And my mind goes there looking up at the stars sometimes, the science of which I know very little, but in whose awe I frequently stand.

Our back deck is overrun by carpenter bees this time of year. I have never been bothered by bees, but we still keep a tennis racket handy for sport and self preservation. Or at least a quiet outdoor happy hour.

What is it about 3:14? Why do I keep seeing you and why are you the one time that sticks in my head versus another? What are you saying? I need to touch upon your essence. Maybe.

Ghosts of words
circle the empty room
where I was young
stars in daylight

Ah, Merwin, now you're on to something. Words are stars on the page, once we read them we can't get at the things themselves, the emotions themselves, the people themselves, that they describe. "The [things] we consider have long been gone." The struggle to catch stars and words and meaning is eternal.

That is the struggle, fighting for survival and grace and stars and things in themselves. Fighting for survival and grace and stars and the moon. Maybe 3:14am knows something about the struggle.

On Dreams, Waking

For the most part, I no longer dream when I sleep. Gone are the nocturnal adventures of flying Superman-like around familiar places or walking down the middle school hall in tighty-whiteys. Gone is the house I grew up in transported to another time and place and being laid out differently. Gone is the running from or battling gangs or monsters. Gone are the falling dreams and gone are the subconscious hook-up sessions that leave you confused upon waking.

Sometimes I miss dreaming. But it cruised out of town in a land speeder with sound sleep, which is another thing missing at night.

Usually though, I don't miss dreaming at night because I have always more than made up for it with dreams during the day. My mind has been known to wander locally, continentally, internationally, globally, celestially, with little or no cue.

Geographically my mind is often led to places like England's Lake District or anywhere around New Zealand. The Hawaii of Merwin and Jack Johnson and the H.U.R.T. trail races. Mountain monasteries in France and half-conjured ponderings of Inca civilization in South America.

Sometimes my mind is immersed thru-hiking sections of the Appalachian Trail or drools at the Trans-Rockies or Trans-Alpine Runs and others it hangs with a pint at the Eagle and Child Pub where Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams gabbed together.

The obvious cues to kick-start these mental travels are books, magazines and movies--pilgrimage porn that cannonballs the mind to their documented destination.

Museums have been known to hotwire a journey as has music. In Chicago, within a few blocks you can meander through the Field Museum, Adler Planetarium, Shedd Aquarium, and Art Institute, which give you any number of vehicles to transcend time and space (no flux capacitor required).

But I find that I don't need much in the way of external prompts. It might be taking a different route to get to a familiar destination. Or going for a long run.

When solo runs peek over 20 miles they can turn into sufferfests for me. I've discussed the reasons I run here before, but certainly the mind-freeing/sweat lodge style transcendence sometimes necessary on a long run has to fit in there as well. Daydreaming moves beyond opportunity to straight necessity. A wandering mind is a means of survival, trying to will distraction to reality in order to dull the pain.

This is a long-winded, winding path to where my mind started out this morning--where dreams and will meet. That itch or impulse to act on a dream, to will it into reality. To bring a fantastic notion, through vision, planning, work, into something you make happen.

And that's where I like to spend my time and mind: on making something out of my waking dreams.