Sunday, June 5, 2016

Welcome to the Living Dream

You know how you can lay in bed sometimes, neither awake nor asleep, in those twilight hours between late night and early morning? That's how it was for me that night: a long, purgatorial period of non-sleep, of which I was conscious but not really awake.

Until, suddenly, something woke me up all the way -- I don't know what, just a vague, silent prompting to Get Up, involuntary and almost physical. So, I got up.

A split second later, an alarm went off nearby, as to coincide perfectly with my totally spontaneous wake-up.

There followed a moment of stark confusion on my part, as I simultaneously clawed through my blear of half-sleep while trying to trace the source of this alarm that had so synchronistically announced itself. This alarm, I determined, was my watch ... except, I hadn't set any alarm (I don't even know how to; best I can figure is, some buttons got pressed randomly during the course of the preceding day). And, equally eerie: I tried to tell myself that the alarm had started before I woke up, thus signalling said wake-up ... except, it hadn't. The alarm had sounded only a hair after my awakening -- but definitely after, as to coincide with my levering upright instead of the opening of my eyes.

I then sat on my bed in the perfect dark, in an awkward, half-risen angle, listening to the alarm chirp its minute-long chirp. Once again, I'd been synchroshocked.

I remained in this awestruck position for some minutes afterward, long enough to irritate my back. Finally, I reached for a pen and a Post-It, and wrote "alarm synchro -- with blog post."