Wake up bird!

This morning I beat the bird. I woke up at 12:06 A.M.. I don't know if this is going to become a habit. I am sure that it is because I was asleep before sundown. I laid down to read and drifted off to sleep. I am not uncomfortable with this routine as for many, many years I worked the midnight shift. I worked 11:00 P.M. to 7:00 A.M. for two years when I was in the Army. People used to stare when my fellow soldiers and I would be having draft beers and pastrami sandwiches at eight o'clock in the morning. I worked midnight to 8:00 A.M. for many years at the telephone company. It was not by choice, I had the least seniority of anyone in the plant and was forced to work those hours because no one else wanted to. It created havoc within my family but not as much as living in a cardboard box and eating weeds would have. I have regrets but I did my best. The regret is that my best was nowhere near as good as someone else's very worst effort would have been.
Memories and dreams are becoming a big deal in my life. There is still a ten minute delay when I try to retrieve a memory but other memories are flooding my mind constantly. Things that I was not even aware that I remembered are constantly cropping up. The span is enormus. I can remember the Christmas when I was three years old. I remember the day that my parents brought my brother home from the hospital. I remember my Grandmother Hulda. That memory is cherished deeply and tainted by the memory of her funeral. It was one of the two times I ever saw my Father cry. I held my Mother's hand as she died, I know how my Father felt and I watched her go through the same tears.
Dreams are much the same as they have always been but they are much more vivid. There is still the nightmare that I am absent from the Army and they are looking for me. There is still the nightmare that I am late for work and have no way to get there. There is still the nightmare that there is no food for my family and no way to get any. The only relief is that I pop awake and realize that those situations no longer exist and I am free to float like a leaf on a stream. No direction and no goal and only the inevitable cascade in the future. I am free to harm only myself by my lethargy. "I'm just sittin here watchin the world go by.". I traveled extensively when I was younger. I never found a joy over the horizon that could match the joy of being home in New England. If you are looking for Paradise, you will find it by sitting at the kitchen table of your own home. There is no greater peace or joy or comfort to be found anywhere. It doesn't matter where home is, home is where your heart finds peace. I have seen people living in the halls of power and wealth that were not at peace and therefore not home. I have seen people living in a tarpaper shack in Texas that were at peace and therefore home. HOME, let the word roll around in your mind and taste the ambrosia of its sound on your lips and tongue. Feel the warmth of it as it travels through your mind.
A denizen of those halls of power and wealth once wrote "You can never go home again.". He was right, you can never go home again because, if you are lucky, you are home.
Perhaps I should find an hospitable island. It would be appropriate because I think that my last name means island home in my Grandparent's native tongue. That might explain the joy I feel when the cold, salty, breeze touches my nostrils and the murmor or crash of waves touch my ears or the plaintive cry of seabirds touch my heart. It would certainly explain the joy of scallops and clams and smelts and haddock. I lived right on the edge of the sea for several years. I still remember the Sun rising from the waves on a weekend morning. That was in New England. I lived on the edge of the sea in Galveston, Texas for six months. By the time that the Sun rose there, it was already to hot to enjoy and I was far from home.
I am enjoying Coolidge's legacy!