I wish I had a boat

Sooth, I know not why I am so tired. Slept 10 hours last night, after a bubble bath and a 45 minute meditation; got up, did yoga, poached an egg, wandered down to the beach and fell asleep on a rock for an hour. Some doofus was using a table saw on the ridge behind me. I drive all this way to get away from industrial noise, and there is a table saw at the beach. Blarrrgh.

I really wonder if there's something wrong with me, that I sleep so much. It weirds people out, but I've been like that since I was born. Sleeping nine, or ten, or ten and a half hours a night is not unusual for me, and if I don't get enough sleep, trying to function like a normal human is physically painful. Perhaps I should try some sort of cleanse, or fast, or exercise, or homeopathic something, but I don't know what, and I don't want to mortify the spirit to a greater extent than it has already been mortified, lately. I am on vacation, dammit, I'll sleep if I want to.

Usually it seems to me that when I fancy myself in a desperate situation, and am clamoring to whatever powers that be that I need a little help, here, the powers that follow me are irritatingly smug and tight-lipped about it. I remember in Mexico, when I had returned to find a psycho landlady who had not yet vacated my house and was demanding excessive money from me in payment of imaginary debts, and the former love of my life was living with somebody else, and I was melting down about all of it, K. told me that my guides were in the room. One of them, she said, had his arm around my shoulders, and was patting my back and shaking his head. "He says that this is nothing at all compared to the battles you're GOING to fight," she said. This was not entirely comforting.

This time I've been asking for advice, and they're actually being nice to me. The night before last they didn't say anything, but gave me something blue to breathe in, which felt all nice and soothing and opened up the top of my head. Last night it was orange, like coals--I don't know what effect that is supposed to have. I don't feel fiery. I just feel tired, and like writing and writing even though I don't have much to say.

Last night, brother-in-law and I were discussing the vagaries of my extremely conservative parents. The last time I went to visit them with C., my mother had RENTED a cot and set it up in the office for me to sleep on, so that I didn't sin in her house. She gave C. the best bedroom, with the Nantucket decor and the private bathroom. At least he didn't have to sleep in the garage. When Mom showed me the cot, I started laughing in incredulity, and even Dad joined in. "Your dad has a clue," said brother-in-law. "Once we all went out without the two of you, and said we'd be back in two hours. After about an hour and forty-five minutes we were ready to go, and I saw your dad checking his watch so that we didn't surprise you." How sweet. After all, I am THIRTY-SIX YEARS OLD.

The only thing worse than having your parents put you on a cot in the office, however, is suspecting that this is a relief to your boyfriend. I mentioned this, and brother-in-law said, "Serena, you rock." Do I rock? I feel like I'm just perpetually messing up, because I sleep too much.

Sometimes I want to live the life of a character in a Robertson Davies novel--erudite, eccentric, argumentative, contextualized somewhere between great art, great scholarship, and academic uselessness. This afternoon I picked up "Murther and Walking Spirits" and curled up on the big cuddly couch in the baroque, sage green reading room of the Belfast Public Library. It's little short of a miracle that this library is here. It's suspiciously brand-new, light-drenched, well-furnished, Internet-connected, and freshly painted in Martha Stewart shades of butternut, cream and sage for a public library in a town of 6300. Maybe I actually did die, driving home last Tuesday. Maybe I just went plowing through a red light and into a huge truck, and this is the Bardo.

I don't know what to do with myself.