war

despite what the column to the right says, i am actually perusing several texts at once. it's a habit i've always had in order to keep from blowing through books to quickly. i do like a good re-read, but this makes me slow down and really take more from the story being told.

i woke up last night, 2 am. total unrest in play. cracked the ceremonial bullet of ninkasi and tee tee and i settled into my chair. she's as used to this routine as i am. she knows when she follows me downstairs, waits by the chair for me to return from the kitchen and either steer us out to the back porch or head towards the comforts of the reading chair. no sooner is the book cracked that she settles into my lap. i think there is comfort in the routine for both of us. it comes from almost 14 years together. it's her way of "being there". she's doing what she knows she can do when armies of demons are at play within me.

the great unrest comes from a bevy of places. none of which are super important, but keep me engaged on my desires and dreams. i know shit's not right when i come up with a grand scheme one day, the completely flip it the next and replace it with something else. total unrest. i've been a junkie since my last journey. there has been no silver lining in the physical injuries at all. the spiritual and emotional are all connected. i've learned that.

partaking in the text of the evening, i came across a passage that spoke volumes to me and stopped me cold.

"I still remembered how to negotiate the long, horrible process of physical collapse. It starts with pain, of course, but the pain is at the edge of what I thought of as a deep, dark valley. At the bottom of the valley is true incapacitation, but it might take hours to get down there, working your way through strata of misery and dissociation until your muscles simply stop obeying and your mind can't even be trusted to give commands that make sense. The most valuable thing I knew from my running experience was that when you start hurting you're not even close to the bottom of the valley, and that if you don't panic at the first agonies there's much, much more of yourself to give." --sebastian junger, war.

and with that...i remembered and realized.
tonight i bet i sleep like a baby.