On "the wee, small hours of the morning”

Insomnia is not usually a problem for me. I fall asleep quite easily, but I am prone to waking up around three o’clock in the morning. I am not able to fall back asleep after that. I try all the usual remedies: warm milk, lying on the couch, and watching infomercials. Nothing seems to work.

I have tried to make those hours into a productive time, but I find that only a limited number of activities are possible. It is like only certain parts of my brain are actually active. I find that I cannot write a coherent sentence, but I can paint, draw, or sculpt with an uncharacteristic ease. Aerobic exercise is out of the question, but I seem to be more flexible than usual. I can do yoga stretches that I have been unable to do since college when I took a yoga class. I didn’t take that class, by the way, because I wanted to learn yoga. I needed a few extra credits to graduate and it seemed like an easy class. Actually, it was a painful and humiliating experience as I am about as flexible as Dorothy’s tin man before he is oiled. Perhaps, if the class had been offered at four in the morning, I would have gotten a better grade.

Music, at this time of night, just doesn’t sound “right”. Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and J. S. Bach’s works seem most appropriate, but end up depressing me. Rock and Roll is too frenetic. R&B is depressingly lonely. I have even tried listening to Country Western songs that give me hives at the best of times. No, it is not a time for music. I have, instead, learned to appreciate the silence.

I wrap up in a blanket with a cup of hot tea while I sit in the darkness outside on the deck. There is an eerie quiet at that time of night. I can hear unseen trains that I never hear during the day. I watch and listen to the lines of cargo planes leaving the airport and making a parade of lights overhead. Even the leaves on the trees seem to be moving in a jerky, unnatural motion when the wind blows. I can watch them move, but they don’t seem to want to make any sound. You have the unsettled feeling that there is "something" there in the darkness just beyond your field of vision. I have come to appreciate this time in much the same way that I appreciate E. A. Poe. It is a little creepy at times, but you get a perspective that can be found nowhere else.