I committed to write every day for 40 days, and yesterday it didn’t happen. I actually wrote a piece into a Word file, but because of a storm going on outside I had no internet service and could not post it. So I think I will just trust the wisdom of that and not post it.

But there is more, and it is a mystery to me. I could not sleep on Saturday night, and finally fell asleep on Sunday morning about dawn. After a few hours I tried to wake up and could not. This continued several times during the day. I finally got up at some point and ate, fed my dog, and wrote but I could not awaken. I was sleepwalking. It was a stormy, cold, windy day outside so I did what I never seem to do anymore – I gave myself the day off and got in bed to read. But I couldn’t read, so I went back to sleep. I slept, and slept, and slept and slept – all evening, all night, and all the next morning. I did not know a body could sleep so long unless it is in a coma. Almost 30 hours straight. Fortunately it was a Sunday and I had no appointments on Monday; but had I had some I honestly don’t know if I could have done them. I was paralyzed. Does a person get worried by this or just accept it? Worrying is more my style, about everything.

I read my daily Rilke passages from yesterday and today. Both seemed encouragingly apt. The first one, from a letter, begins with this sentence: “All the worlds of the universe plunge into the Invisible as into a yet deeper reality.” All of my worlds had surely “plunged into the Invisible.” This encouraged me a bit, but today’s reading did so even more.  From his Book of Hours:

The Beauty of You
In deep nights I dig for you like treasure.
For all I have seen
that clutters the surface of my world
is poor and paltry substitute
for the beauty of you
that has not happened yet…

Ah, I am not the crippled, sick, lazy, frightened of the world sleeper who cannot awaken to save herself, as I am tempted to accuse myself of being. I am a miner mining the twilight for treasure. After 30 hours of sleep and half a pot of coffee my brain still does not feel ready to plug into this poor and paltry substitute of a world. But when it does, it will bring that vision back to this world and infuse everything it sees with the beauty of You. I’m tired of splitting the worlds; I know they belong together. Today I re-commit.