not quite restless
When I can't sleep I sit in the quiet and dark of night: book-less, cover-less, companion-less. Having crept from my bed; stolen from my room; quietly emerged into the skin-tingling cold of the early winter, snowless nights; sit.
I draw from my inner stores of silence, not allowing a muscle to move, lest I break the magic of the witching hour. I sit entranced, wrapped as tightly as I can manage, cradling myself; a mother-less baby.
Minutes? Hours? Days? A seeming lifetime was spent in this very fashion this very morning. I owned the night-turning-early morning. I was thanked for my solitude, my watchfulness by a falling star; burning out as I too burnt out, spending the last stores of the previous days' energy.
Sonnet 14 ("Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck")
Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck,
And yet methinks I have astronomy;
But not to tell of good or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality;
Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,
Pointing to each his thunder, rain, and wind,
Or say with princes if it shall go well
By oft predict that I in heaven find.
But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
And, constant stars, in them I read such art
As truth and beauty shall together thrive
If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert:
Or else of thee this I prognosticate,
Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.
~ William Shakespeare
I draw from my inner stores of silence, not allowing a muscle to move, lest I break the magic of the witching hour. I sit entranced, wrapped as tightly as I can manage, cradling myself; a mother-less baby.
Minutes? Hours? Days? A seeming lifetime was spent in this very fashion this very morning. I owned the night-turning-early morning. I was thanked for my solitude, my watchfulness by a falling star; burning out as I too burnt out, spending the last stores of the previous days' energy.
Sonnet 14 ("Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck")
Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck,
And yet methinks I have astronomy;
But not to tell of good or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality;
Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,
Pointing to each his thunder, rain, and wind,
Or say with princes if it shall go well
By oft predict that I in heaven find.
But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
And, constant stars, in them I read such art
As truth and beauty shall together thrive
If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert:
Or else of thee this I prognosticate,
Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.
~ William Shakespeare
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