TheBanyanTree: (no subject)

[Julie Anna Teague]

This starts with reading, as do many stories in my life.  I love to read, and
the only time I find to read is at night, after I've stared at a computer screen
for eight or nine hours straight, picked up groceries, made dinner, cleaned up
the kitchen, squeezed in some excercise, interacted with the boy child, driven
him somewhere and back, helped with homework, fed the cat and the chicken,
hauled out the trash, glanced through the bills, watered the plants, and taken a
hot bath.  It's usually between eight and nine p.m. when I can finally crawl
into bed and read, but by I am tired.  I read  as long as I can, and then I fall
asleep, often way too early.  Consequently, by four in the morning, I've had my
eight hours and I'm wide awake.  But I hesitate to get up and shuffle around
because I will wake other creatures who will either be irritated or want
something from me.   So I lie quietly in bed and think my thoughts. Sometimes I
meditate.  Sometimes I worry.  Random thoughts, new thoughts, obsessively
re-worked thoughts.  Every now and then I solve a problem.  Sometimes I lull
myself with a smooth pattern of deep breaths in and out.  Occasionally I am
inspired, lying there in the quiet dark with only the late summer crickets for
company.  This morning, at four a.m., the first thought into my head was a haiku:

       picturing themselves
     naked, exposed, shivering,
     the trees blushed scarlett

I suppose I felt them tremble, felt them just barely moving the white cotton
curtains through the still open window, in the first cool evenings of Fall.

Julie
jateague at indiana.edu