Daylight Savings Flutters

Once again, sleep evades me. My mind is awash and a-swirl with the detritus of thoughts from the past 24 hours and beyond. The ever-present distraction of each snatch of idea, imagining and daydream rattles against the shutters of slumber I have tried to draw against the mental storm within and around.  And it’s not as though it’s the lethal missiles which hurricanes and cyclones can transform large inanimate objects into; I’m not plagued by world peace, global financial crises, planetary starvation, rape and pillaging. The distraction to my sleep is more like the annoyance of willy-willy as it rises from nowhere, for not very long, before descending to nowhere, only to pop into existence in the nearby vicinity. The scraps of leaves, motes of dirt and dried and brittle twigs of my thoughts taunt my attempt of unconsciousness with echoes of how to spend the millions that weren't won in the recent lottery; what could my Mother possibly have considered buying for me as a birthday present that she considers I’ve wanted for a while and hopes I haven’t already purchased. Something that would cause her consternation with regard to my retrieving it from the Post Office.

Eddies of events weeks and weeks away obscure my dreams as I try to imagine spending, and enjoying, New Year’s Day, drinking and dancing, cavorting and amazing as I ‘bust my moves’ on the dance-floor. Of course, then there is the sheer ludicrousness of even the GLIMMER of an idea that I could bust ANYTHING on the dance-floor…unless it be someone’s drink, or jaw (if the flailing of my arms built up the adequate momentum and trajectory).

But then, is it the aimless, pithy whirling of fragmentary thoughts that distracts me from the depths of sleeping nothingness? Or could it be that time of the year, or one of two, to be more precise, when we speed the sun forward for a moment, turn the earth back a little, and confuse and confound our minds and bodies with Daylight Savings. Am I merely just out of sync with me, trying to sleep when I’d normally be trying to stay awake? Forcing myself, with insistence and urgency, to relax and release the day that was. It’s gone now, done and dusted, irretrievable to unwind, rewind and cast anew.

Like a phantasm shimmering on the surface of the pond of possibilities, it taunts me with what I have done and not done, cajoles me with the roulette wheel signpost of choices that still lay before me, each one equally as inviting as the next and the previous, and yet already, before they are begun, if feels like time has already run out. Which choice, too long ago, should have been another? Why do I feel like a passenger on a south-bound train, heading north? I can’t remember the last station that we stopped at, nor where the next one ahead is. Or have I passed the nearest stop as the train enters the express portion of tonight’s timetable. One, please, to sleep!