Sleeping With The Dead

It took awhile after I woke up late Friday morning before I realized it was… Friday and not Thursday.

And that realization was only possible after I first ruled out it being Wednesday since I didn’t recall much of that day either. But that’s how mornings are when one is still getting used to a life filled with extended periods of sleep separated only by brief and often barely remembered moments of transitory wakefulness.

But then I realized something more. I had just slept though Art Walk. Both the day of it and the night. I had missed my first Art Walk since our inaugural event at which 17 of us - which is one of two or three official head counts - first showed up so seemingly many years ago.

I then realized I didn’t know if the new restaurant owners I had helped with their utility problem at 5th and Main got their lights so they could have their doors open on Art Walk night to say hi to all their new neighbors. Nor did I know how the brand new Art Annex at the Farmer’s and Merchant's Bank did. And I also didn't how the ladies with the 3-Day pop-up store in the Annex filled with hats, purses and jewelry - whom I had brought there to try out Main Street before they opened new a store of their own in our latest Main Street incubator – had fared.

I equally had no idea what had happened at the still new vendor’s parking lot or how the local band was in their new place or anything about any of the dozens of other places, events and people that make up our community of Art Walk other than knowing that – one way or the other – it all managed to work out.

So I did the only thing I could do.

I went back to sleep.

And I dreamed of cowboy days and fighting nights and a time when my brain had more dopamine than sense. And I silently smiled and awaited the day I would soon be happily back with them all in the longest sleep of them all.