For 4AM.  So here I am, just over enemy border, in enemy hour.  For only the third time, that I can remember, and the first time after setting alarm for the cruelest of writing hours.  Nearly went back to sleep, but body, more mind, wouldn’t let me.  This session seems more quiet than the others.  Nothing moving, nothing sounding.  Even that ticking is scared to allow its inherent and maker-given movement, functioning.  Won’t lie, typing on phone.  Don’t want to disturb a thing– and, bloody bloody hell, have to use restroom again.  Again, as I did soon as the alarm pulled me from the oddest dream.  First, I’m having to pee so much from all the water I drank last night rather than that cider Deb gave me, as I hoped for an early sitting, or session, as I’m still laying…  Forgot where I was going with that–  oh, that dream…  Remember pulling up to a house with some guys (don’t know who), where we were met by a car that pulled up, armed men exiting.  Then, writer wakes.  Odd, all I can say.
So now again I tussle with the idea of going at that coffee.  Do I?  Sure just what you want to read about, right?  Writer debating if he should have coffee or not.  If I were a reader I’d be like “Fuck, just go fucking drink the coffee or SHUT UP.” Thinking I may go back to sleep in a bit, but not before the bathroom visit, then come back to pillows, and not let self go to sleep–  what the hell’s going on with the writer in this new 4AM battle?  Doesn’t matter.  The same thing.  Today has to be different somehow, and seamlessly different.  Visually and obviously different.  How, though–  or maybe that’s not the best approach or approaching mindset.  Do what I always do, work with what I have always had, just do everything with more force and passion, ardent action, than I ever have.  Yes, that.  Much needs to change, and the change with how I teach is the first step–  start blog for Summer session, then email those students, introducing yourself– write syllabus–  Plan first meeting down to the minute.  Quote, word of day, questions, writing prompts (shorter writing times, then have them expand on free writes later, at their warrant)…  Now, thinking about teaching, my lessons and lectures, I’m much more awake.  Don’t want to leave couch, stop my writing, just want to stay here, forget the bathroom and all that water I drank, my vessel’s functioning.  Pen-to-paper, stress that as I always have just more accented in direness, tone.  Huh, bet I’d wake with surprising speed and elevation if I just started scribbling, now.  But that would entail movement, not only breaking this forward of mine, but as well waking someone in the house.  The fridge runs, light, it too is intimidated by the 4AM volume and numerical.
Allergies causing me to sniffle.. “Shut up!” I whisper to myself, imagining how my mood would nosedive if one of them woke up, and father role initiated now.  Ugh, writer quicker, about anything.  About being a student, all the students from this past term, especially the 5-ers, with their filled Comp Books and questions so early in the morning, that last reading from their journals, how one student r cited a poem or prose piece about being too damaged to go on, something to that mood or perspective and and other student (one I’ve written about before, ‘N’) telling her “You’re never too damaged.” I need to be stronger in my instruction, so now I start.  Notes for morrow, or today, when on campus in cell–
You have one minute to write your life-story…  Better get started… (Then of course I start the timer, hold up a watch or this phone, actually I’ll hold up the Garmin…)
Then, introduce myself, and what the next class, Composition, is all about.
Then, their past with reading and writing, English classes…  Then a poem or song.
I check the clock, as I became lost in my storming above…  4:34.  Would love some sleep.  Or coffee.  Or allergy pill.  Or bathroom visit.  Or to just listen to that refrigerator, the metallic and airy soft hum of its run.  A fellow writer once called this 4AM war a fool’s errand.  Starting to be aligned with such thought.  This is just defiance of time.  No masterpiece being created.  No profoundness precipitating.  But, so’s to be forecasted from a fool, oui?  Forgot I left one of the kitchen lights, better light, preferable atmosphere– or should I turn that one off and use the light directly above me, the one connected to and part of the fan, the one I can adjust as I want– no, just looked up and saw it already on, low to that ambient mood level.  Must have been on for over a day, damn me.  Time to give it a rest.  Not sure I know how to change those bulbs.  Metaphor?  No, statement, fool…
Okay, bathroom break, but not before again ingesting this hour’s grip on me.  The still ness and stark silence to everything.  But I can’t over indulge.  Need sensibility and energy about me, as I’m set to launch into a run from J’s school, after dropping him off, running up the street and along Summerfield as I used to, and into the Park.  Hoping for ten miles– shit, charge the Garmin!  Better not forget to do that on Summer Day 1.  So, bathroom then rest (‘nother lap around that thought).  Need to go at everything tomorrow like a ravenous fanged mammal, hunting, beyond simply hungry.  And from a writer or entrepreneur’s point, more than anything I’ve attempted before.  I want to shock myself today, or as Pac said, I want to shiver,” looking back on what I’ve done in just a day.  Huh, well if that’s your attitude then you should go hit that coffee, Mikey.
Used washroom, now back to pillows.  I’m actually under the sheet down here, ready for some sleep.  Just hope I don’t find myself at that house with those assassin-like characters.  What the hell was I doing there?
Notice my stomach, agitated and hungry.  Should I eat something?  Coffee?  No… SLEEP. Don’t be more a fool.  Sleep.. Deal with it, you need sleep.
I want to write–
I don’t care, go to sleep.  Stop acting like a toddler.
So I do throw up my hands, put down phone, put down head into pillow.  Just before 5.  And 4AM suffering another total loss at the hands of a foolish but driven writer.
Another bathroom break?  Goddamn water…
Realized–  aim of 4AM war or one of its sessions isn’t to to stay up and keep writing till the kids are up, but to have a standalone piece before 5, go back to sleep and start day then.  To use the quiet, to have everything I want.  From now on, 1000 words before 5.  Always the objective against this staunch aggressor.
(6/8/15)