The big city run was a success, not only in productivity terms, but also in getting my schedule wrenched back into something resembling the normal. But it did not last.

I crashed about midnight, quite tired, perfect. But toward five a.m. I woke early, having slept a little wrong, the problem shoulder hurting me, along with instability in the gut. I started in on the standard remediations. Tiger Balm and coffee. A little bite of breakfast. Stretching this way and stretching that. Not much effect. I also felt hotter than seemed right for the hour.

So, phase two, hot bath, a pair of Naproxen down the hatch, and laying down again, favoring the shoulder, reading for a bit until sleep took back over, counseling myself the whole time to not sleep forever because it would fuck the schedule.

I slept forever, until five in the p.m.

This has been going on in much the same fashion since my professional firing squad let fly two years ago. At first I was pretty sure that it was caused by the stress. But I think the truth is more nuanced, because I am living a relatively stress-free life right now.

I’m coming to think that there’s a more general problem, something to do with inflammation. Working hours don’t cause it directly any more. They just make it worse, by adding deadlines and stress, and also by making it impossible to just take care of acute outbreaks at the expense of a fucked schedule. It gets chronic.

The relief of summer takes away both those complicating factors. There’s still unhappiness in the pain and lost productivity. But it becomes manageable, at a cost.

And there is a small upside. I always dream very well, in these supplementary nappings. This time it was of an art form. Simple slides to begin. Very minimal line drawings accompanied by short phrases. A narrative building as the slides click into view, fade out, and the next comes up.

Maybe there is sound later. Just notes suspended at first. Fragments of melody.

And a cut to footage. Gradually it becomes a film. Then back to a slideshow, the music growing sparse and atonal.

I don’t know what story it tells and it doesn’t matter.

I dreamt a shell, I dreamt a form.