Man, I had one of those nights. I got into bed at 10:30, anticipating waking up at 5:00, and couldn't go to sleep. At around 11:30 I started listening to Genesis's "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" since I had some of those tunes running through my head, and ended up listening to the entire first disc. It wasn't until after 1:15 that I at least started fading in and out. You know, that wonderful experience when whenever you realize you're conscious, you're not sure if you'd been asleep or awake, but if you haven't been asleep, then you must have been awake.

When my alarm went off at 4:55, I was half-awake. I know I looked at the clock at 4:08. I got out of bed and looked out the window, hoping it would be raining, but it looked pretty calm out there. I tried to convince myself that I was too tired to go to SFZC, but that wasn't working, either. I was fully alert. So I went. Good boy, have a cookie. Of course, it started raining while I was there and clearly the best move I've done all year was take along my rain gear at the last minute. I walked my bike home in the rain which is really quite pleasant at seven in the morning. And you're not working.

Insomnia, I can manage a night of it with a concerted bit of patience, but the poor suckers who have it as a problem, I can't imagine. It just ravages the inner depths of the psyche. Doesn't it?

So I'm not looking forward to trying to stay awake and lucid for the rest of the day. I'm waiting for it to sufficiently dry out outside so I can head out to Borders to read and have more coffee, and then to Beale St. for NTN trivia and beer, luscious, delicious beer. I'm cancelling the rest of the day's sitting since the lack of sleep would make it unproductive. Even this morning's second sitting, my mind was wandering all over the place. It found a pretty patch of daisies over that hill over yonder. No, not that one, the one beyond it. Who am I talking to?

About the whole Buddhism thing, I'm not really the worshipping type. So as far as any worshipping aspect goes, I'm not really with that. I see it as a practical extension of the existential quest. I can follow cosmology, astronomy and astrophysics until I'm blue in the face (and not having a math or physics background, I take on a nice indigo glow really quick), but it's still only a theoretical musing on the big questions of why and how, and what are we doing with it.