Sleep comes hard now in Hollywood. Similar to before, but even harder now. Last time I was here, I converted that lack of sleep into early mornings for exercise. The fresh air – still crisp before the sun had time to take full effect - and the silent green sidestreets, would be followed by the muggy, filled air of a clanging gym. All done, showered and completed from with plenty of room to spare before a full mid-morning breakfast. Later, at night, I’d be served a heavy dose of drowsiness well before midnight. I'd finish work and almost run home to collapse into bed, whilst begging whomever takes such requests, for even thirty minutes more than four hours sleep. But that was before. That was last time.
Now sleep comes even harder than that in Hollywood.
Now sleep comes even harder than that in Hollywood.
Publicly I can dismiss it as jet lag and body clock readjustments. I take a while to get with the time of the place I'm in. That's not it though. 4am here is 7am there and either way I should be peacefully unconscious. So that is not it. It's something else.
Sure I got Trouble in Mind. But that's not it. Or maybe that's exactly it. But it doesn't feel like that. It feels like a physical thing. An atmospheric thing. A thing that feels to my skin. The windows are open now and the still, cool air from outside, reaches over my bed. I’m not here in this apartment for long. This is just reset point, somewhere to land into. I'll be gone soon enough. Maybe that's it. I loved where I lived before. I kept it sparse and minimal and lonesome, but I kept it exactly mine all the same. It was mine and on the rare occasion another was let in, it really felt like I was letting someone not just through a door, but into mine. It meant more to me, even if you didn't notice. The more a place feels like Home, the more whoever is let in will feel part of my home. Not to them maybe. Just to me. This place now, isn't my Home.
Sure I got Trouble in Mind. But that's not it. Or maybe that's exactly it. But it doesn't feel like that. It feels like a physical thing. An atmospheric thing. A thing that feels to my skin. The windows are open now and the still, cool air from outside, reaches over my bed. I’m not here in this apartment for long. This is just reset point, somewhere to land into. I'll be gone soon enough. Maybe that's it. I loved where I lived before. I kept it sparse and minimal and lonesome, but I kept it exactly mine all the same. It was mine and on the rare occasion another was let in, it really felt like I was letting someone not just through a door, but into mine. It meant more to me, even if you didn't notice. The more a place feels like Home, the more whoever is let in will feel part of my home. Not to them maybe. Just to me. This place now, isn't my Home.
So maybe that's it. I don't feel at home and the tossing and the turning comes from that.
It is too cold now. I have two windows. One at the foot of the bed and one beside the door to the closet. I close the one by the bed and get back under the covers. Still too cold. I close the other one. Now there is no feeling or sound from outside. No outside presence or atmosphere. Just the room, the gray trousers flung over the chair and the desk with on it a lamp, a wallet and yesterday's loose change. The lamp gives off the right minimal amount of light that could distract the darkness in my head, so I turn it on. It buzzes. A steady, high pitched, just above silent wail. It's that white-noise sound, but with more colour. I turn the lamp back off. I've got enough steady stream in my head, I don't need a complimentary buzz.
Once it gets light, I can wander outside. How long will that be till the sun comes up? I pick up the phone to check the time. There's a new message. It came through whilst I was cheating in some sleep. I don't want to read it. Not now anyway. It's gonna get in my head. I’m trying to create a vacuum in there. That will surely put me back to sleep. A still mind, is a still body, is a resting body, is sleep. That's the equation I’m working with. I roll over to face the wall. Why is every wall in Hollywood painted the same colour? Eggshell. Every apartment you walk into, its the same thing. No ivory, no beige, no accents, no feature wall, no character. Just eggshell and dead flowers. Well maybe not dead flowers. Why did I say that? I think its the song I’m thinking of now.
“And I wont forget to put roses on your grave.”
Damn! Now my mind is racing. What could the message say. It comes through unprompted. Completely unexpected. It's not a response to a question. It's a conversation starter. There's no point leaving it to later. There is no vacuum up there now, just questions and hope and fear and more questions. I reach back down to the phone.
I read the message. I click out of it and check the time again. It's a long way still till the sun breaks out. I read the message again. I feel something, but I don't know whether to trust that feeling. I've been here before and pre-dawn isn’t the time to face these thoughts and feelings. Once upon a time the dawn would rescue me. I was living in Melbourne and was one block back from a quiet part of the beach. There was a discarded blue-stone pavilion, just at the point where the sand meets the sidewalk. It may have been used by lifesavers of old for shelter and storage. Or maybe it was used as a toilet block, before the junkies of the eighties forced it's closure to fight against their marauding invasion. I’m not sure. But it stood there stoic, alone and forgotten, yet completely immovable. I’d take shelter from the wind behind it and wait for the sun to start its effect.
My mind would be leaden with drugs or booze or, most likely, simply from lack of sleep. And then the dawn would come. I didn't know then how to ask the questions I do now and yet that dawn would still answer them nonetheless. The dawn would rescue me. I knew it would. I expected it to. And it did. For a while anyways. And then one day it didn't. One morning, I stood out there, wrapped in a high collar coat and waited for my daily redemption. It didn't come. I became scared and confused. I returned the next morning, this time certainly filled with booze and drugs and watched the pinks streak across the sky and the seagulls screech their first daily calls of insanity. Nothing. No rescue. I came every morning for a week, searching and waiting. This was when I decided it was time to leave.
This happened years ago. So long ago, that there isn't even a glimmer of belief that the dawn is going to rescue me from this feeling now. Those days have passed. Later, when the sun comes up over this Hollywood, I can walk out for a bagel and some time in the park. I've been to this park in the morning before. Once, a long time ago, I had pleaded for help on the phone. This was to a stranger. If I would have known myself or her better, I never would have bothered. Another time, I sat on the grass feeling ambushed by events I was being blamed for, but had no hand in. Both times I was scared of losing someone who should've been scared of losing me. The second time, whilst still in the park, I received an apology and explanation, the first time I moved to New York.
Why am I thinking of this now? Why? What happened to the whole 'vacuum/still mind' thing? Remembering like this isn't helping.
I flick the computer on and pull up a blank page. The words flow out. These words flow out. I feel a little lighter, but I still want more sleep. Soon, I will have more distraction. That will settle me. Then I will sleep better. I don't know if this is really insomnia or all just part of this part of the movement. I've been out here without the dawn to rescue me for long enough. Or rather, I'm out here BECAUSE the dawn stopped rescuing me. I know this now. I know that this is the reason I left and I know that no matter where I roam, the dawn is always the same. Maybe the sunsets and the twilights and the pace of the afternoons riding the highway along Zuma Beach and stillness of pre-dawn insomnia are different. In fact, they are very different, depending on where you are. But not The Dawn. The dawn is the same. Except that the dawn at home is at Home.
