I'm sitting in my favorite local coffee shop (and no, it isn't Starbucks!), even though I don't really like coffee all that much. But I like the atmosphere of coffee shops. Directly across from me is a framed picture, 50s style, of a woman holding a mug, and over and under her wide-eyed, smiling face are the words "Coffee! You can sleep when you're dead!"
Hmmm.
Me, I like my sleep, and I don't want to wait til I'm dead to enjoy the pleasures of oblivion. If I believed in reincarnation, which I don't, I'm sure I would have been a lazy housecat in another life. As it is, I might just have to face the fact that I'm a lazy human being in this one.
Case in point: I should be writing about my recent trip to the Middle East right now. People are breathlessly waiting for the report (well, waiting anyway, breathless or not). Instead, I'm writing this pointless blog. Why? Who knows? It's all part of the mystery of my inner workings, and if I don't understand myself, good luck to anyone else.
But about the Middle East. It's not that I don't want to write about it. I do. But where do I start? I was chatting with a friend recently, who made the comment that I probably had more stories to tell from the past month than from my entire time in New Zealand over the past 2 years. And he is right.
I want to tell you about the Arab man who took my hand and put my finger in the bullet hole in his head, a souvenir from the time he was shot in 1967, when he was eight months old. Or about sitting in the living room of the Palestinian woman whose daughter was the first female suicide bomber. Watching the sunrise from the top of Mt Sinai. Going to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Singing worship songs from the top of Mt Nebo. Seeing how the morning sun gleams on the golden Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Floating in the Dead Sea. Nearly getting hit by a truck while riding a donkey through a Bedouin village at Petra (seriously).
All these stories and more are waiting to be told. And at least some of them will be, I promise.
I may just have to do something wildly out of character to help speed up the process, such as, I don't know, have a few cups of coffee first? And maybe, God help me, a little less sleep...
Hmmm.
Me, I like my sleep, and I don't want to wait til I'm dead to enjoy the pleasures of oblivion. If I believed in reincarnation, which I don't, I'm sure I would have been a lazy housecat in another life. As it is, I might just have to face the fact that I'm a lazy human being in this one.
Case in point: I should be writing about my recent trip to the Middle East right now. People are breathlessly waiting for the report (well, waiting anyway, breathless or not). Instead, I'm writing this pointless blog. Why? Who knows? It's all part of the mystery of my inner workings, and if I don't understand myself, good luck to anyone else.
But about the Middle East. It's not that I don't want to write about it. I do. But where do I start? I was chatting with a friend recently, who made the comment that I probably had more stories to tell from the past month than from my entire time in New Zealand over the past 2 years. And he is right.
I want to tell you about the Arab man who took my hand and put my finger in the bullet hole in his head, a souvenir from the time he was shot in 1967, when he was eight months old. Or about sitting in the living room of the Palestinian woman whose daughter was the first female suicide bomber. Watching the sunrise from the top of Mt Sinai. Going to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Singing worship songs from the top of Mt Nebo. Seeing how the morning sun gleams on the golden Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Floating in the Dead Sea. Nearly getting hit by a truck while riding a donkey through a Bedouin village at Petra (seriously).
All these stories and more are waiting to be told. And at least some of them will be, I promise.
I may just have to do something wildly out of character to help speed up the process, such as, I don't know, have a few cups of coffee first? And maybe, God help me, a little less sleep...
posted by grackyfrogg @ 3:39 PM
1 Comments:
At 10:54 AM ,
Anonymous said...
thanks for the anonymous posting :-)
So, I was talking to a man I recently met about sleeping. Think about this. You live say 80 years. You sleep 8 hours a day. That's 1/3 of the day. 1/3 of 80 years is ~26. Sleeping 26 years you now have less than 60 living years... I dunno, we need sleep, but that might be incentive to not sleep 10 hours a day (less than 50 living years)... But I'm the one who should be thinking about it ;-)
Philip
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