Last night: didn't get to sleep until around 1 a.m. Today: stayed in bed until nearly 1 p.m. I think I can count on one hand the times I've slept that late in this lifetime, but right now good, lengthy shut-eye is overdue. During this last jaunt to the States, there were only two or three mornings in which I did not wake up anywhere between 3:30 and 6 a.m., and when I say 'wake up' I mean come awake and stay that way. Initially, it probably involved the difference in time zones; after that, it indicated how much was going on and the extent to which my teeny brain was spinning its wheels in response.
Today's a holiday in Madrid, el Día de la Constitutión. Saturday's another, a religious one. Meaning many people have fled to other locales for the long weekend, and those who haven't seem to have gravitated toward the city center to hang out and party. Revelers were about all night in this barrio -- the cold weather may thin the ranks some, but it doesn't wipe 'em out.
It's interesting to move from place to place as I have over the last few weeks and see how I do or don't slip into the feel and routine of each different place. Already, I'm re-absorbing the rhythm of the life here -- so different from the States -- and can feel my existence adjusting to it.
The trip to the States -- I've already written some about it and am about to spill a bit more. I'll try to avoid senseless, deadly boring repetition.
First, a bit of background re: one point:
In the weeks before the trip -- in fact, in the weeks since 9/11 -- I found myself dealing at times with a fair amount of mental unsettledness. I don't have much interest in suffering, having done more than my share of that in earlier years, and so began investigating small ways of distracting myself, providing bits of comfort or relief. One of those, pursuant to an idea suggested by someone I respect very much, involved finding an image from my past, something that felt great, and spending little bits of time visualizing it as clearly as I could, just a minute or two here and there. It's been a while since I've had an animal in my life, a pet (mine or someone else's). I love having cats and dogs around, and really enjoy the feeling of a cat in my lap, curled up, purring away, my hand on it, feeling the fur and the body beneath it, feeling the deep vibration of the purring through hand and thighs.
So now and then during the course of the days, I'd take a minute to imagine that, as clearly as I could. Just to enjoy it.
Meanwhile, back in the States, the next door neighbors -- who have a small, affectionate calico cat -- got two dogs, and as those dogs grew the cat apparently enjoyed living there less and less. My downstair neighbors have, over the course of the last several months, started using the front bedroom in my apartment as an office for their architecture business, which has suited everyone involved. A stairway connects the two apartments, my neighbors come and go as they need to. As the dogs next door became too much for the cat, it adopted my downstairs neighbors as foster parents, spent more and more time in our building. (I knew nothing about this prior to this last visit.)
On November 5th, after a transatlantic flight, after an hour of travel between the airport and my place, after dragging my monster wheeled duffel up to my third-floor dive, I opened the door and a cat walked into the living room to greet me. Within half an hour, I found myself sitting in a chair with a cat in my lap. Just like I'd been visualizing.