Your Brain is Awesome

As most of you already know, due to my near-constant evangelism on the subject, I stopped using an alarm clock about two years ago (I quit cold turkey when I realized that I was using like seven alarm clocks in succession, had worn away the letters on my snooze button, and could no longer hear the song "Billy Liar" by the Decemberists without sitting bolt upright in a panic and flailing about for the nearest timepiece).

When I stopped driving about a month ago, I decided to set an alarm for the first few mornings since the last bus for work leaves my house at 7:41 and I wasn't used to waking on such a strict timetable. A month later, I was still alarm clock dependent (or at least afraid to forfeit the security of setting one) and I was starting to feel lazy and undisciplined (a dirty word in my lexicon).

Wednesday night, when I returned from Florida, I sat down to set my alarm and debated whether to set it for 7:10 (enough time to catch the bus in front of my house) or 6:40 (enough time to catch the bus at the Capitol Square).

While in Florida, I'd been struck by the idea to start catching the bus at the Square—the Square is a mile from my house and I felt like this would be a way to "take back" my mornings, although it would add about twenty or thirty minutes to my commute. Instead of stumbling out of my house at 7:40, slipping and sliding down the icy sidewalk and staggering across Gorham's rush hour traffic to catch the bus, I'd leave my house at 7:15 and take a leisurely (albeit mostly uphill) stroll to the Square. It would give me a chance to get some exercise, listen to my iPod, enjoy the fresh air, and feel like a part of my downtown community instead of just another commuter, rushing off to the suburbs for a day of work.

Anyway, great idea.

So, Wednesday night, I'm debating whether I'm really in the mood for all that awesomeness because it's my first day back in town and I'm really tired and my blood has been thinned by five days of Florida sunshine and I don't want to risk being late for work on my first day back and [insert your favorite excuse here]. So I decided to compromise. I'd set my alarm clock for 7:10 (enough time to catch the bus in front of my house) and I'd set my internal alarm clock for 6:40 (enough time to walk to the Square). I'd let my internal clock decide my fate.

I woke up at exactly 6:40.

Anyway, the walk was awesome and so was the latte I had time to enjoy at Cafe Soleil, so I didn't even bother setting an alarm last night. I woke up at 6:40 again today.

My point: Your brain is awesome. Use it.

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Kitty

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Dear John Letter

Last week, someone said to me, "Our weaknesses are the excess of our strengths."

My first few months in Madison I could have walked a thousand miles without recognizing the sound of someone's sneeze. I went to the movies by myself, I went to dinner by myself, I went to shows by myself. The sun rose and set on my solitude. I wrote every day and I walked every day and the world was the most beautiful it's ever been, ever.

My courage and independence are two of my greatest strengths, but they are packaged side-by-side with isolation, a sort of self-inflicted quarantine. This conflicts with my ideals about community, ideals about which I feel passionately. It's as though I want that community to thrive just outside my bedroom door, like laughter down the hall and dirty soup bowls you find on the counter. I want to exist on its periphery and smile to myself that people are so good to each other. I fall in love with strangers because they don't expect to walk me home.

Sometimes I wonder if someday I will meet someone whose presence won't feel like an ill-fitting overcoat, like something heavy in my pocket that I should've left at home. Someone whose footsteps will fall next to mine like the sound of my own breath, whose body will sleep next to mine like an extension of my own, an eight-limbed Shiva tangled in the sheets.

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