Sleepless Nights

There are a lot of sleepless nights as of late, and there will certainly be more to come. It has always been a problem of mine, doing my best thinking when the lights are off, hyper-aware of the most curious tendencies of night. In the Mandan basement, for instance, I woke up to a glass case of hunting rifles and two deer heads mounted on the wall. My grandmother's small house in a small town is characterized by a motion-sensitive deck light pulsing rhythmically throughout the night. There were back-to-back cold nights in the back of my car, uncomfortably fitting a 6'3" frame into 4" of space, waking at morning light to the ethereal steam of a geyser basin.

Then there are my sleepless nights back in Austin. It is my city that feels like so no matter the changing nature of friendships or the lack of an automobile to get around. I get anxious these days, wondering what I have done and what I will do and how this is all going to work out and how I will get to an interview in the middle of a city I do not want to live in anyways and how practically I could have paid a loan or even a bill when I had the chance but didn't. Then somehow my mind finds its way back to a beach in Spain or a bridge in London or a damp forest in Germany. It always does this, and I remember I would not trade it for anything, and that my very light and agile life is going quite alright.