My sleep was fitful. Nothing like "up all night" or awake at 2:00 a.m. for the rest of the day. It was more like battling a low hum. Lying just above anything restorative, but below wakefulness. I couldn't get comfortable and had constant vivid dreams.
When I awoke I immediately started writing down everything I could remember: my former employee Mookie, my wife Jeanne, his girlfriend Maddie and I in a large outdoor bed, nothing risqué. The girls sleeping. He and I smoking weed out of a homemade glass pipe, but we dropped the weed on the ground and it mixed with sticks and other refuse so we were inhaling trash smoke (I don't smoke anything). SWITCH: Picking up a distraught woman from a stoop in downtown Baton Rouge because she was about to be “beaten by her man"‘, her wanting a ride to somewhere an hour away, her crawling across me in the driver's seat and a trip to an extremely bad part of town where we approached a strangers house from the screened back door at night, TV, pit bulls and yelling emitting from the soft glow of the back door, open to night. SWITCH: A tour of the newly renovated Main Street Market, where I had a restaurant for 21 years, now a fine dining establishment and me deciding I wanted to reopen my store there in a the same small kitchen. SWITCH: A show with my band in a small room which went poorly. The mic stand I had failing and flopping around, seemingly unlimited booms and hinges, us playing the same song three times in a row. Babies on the stage and a new bass player who insisted on singing for me.
Over and over there was me grasping to remember a word with each approach to the surface of awake-ness.
To bring it forward into today.
To remember when I woke up.
I kept repeating it. Remember. Remember. I'd think in my dream "I've got this! I'll remember." And then I'd rise just under full awareness and think "sanctity?" No. "Sanctimonious?" Close. "Sentimentality?" Still. No.
Dig in. Remember.
Sacrosanct.
No context.
Sacrosanct.
//
Sacrosanct
sac·ro·sanct
adjective
(especially of a principle, place, or routine) regarded as too important or valuable to be interfered with.
"the individual's right to work has been upheld as sacrosanct"
I know I do this to y'all from time to time. My brain's cute little trick of setting a word in our prefrontal cortex so it's all I can focus on first thing when I wake up. Some of the religious types may say it's "God trying to tell you something." This never makes sense to me, but understand. I just always commit to follow the words. To let them guide me to something bigger. I'm almost never disappointed.
With sacrosanct, I become fully aware that the opportunity for the overly dramatic hangs heavy like a 1970's fern or spider plant. Leaves and tendrils of foliage dripping over the sides of macramé pot hangers. It feels like the late 70's early 80's were the penultimate time for hanging plants. Right?
"Regarded as too big or valuable to be interfered with." Incredible, really. This feels so much bigger than me. How could it not. It feels like it's reserved for the important things.
Family, friends, values, religion, work ethic, your whys that you’ve defined. A word to describe the spaces and people we hold dear.
I could list them, but I won't out loud. It feels too cheap. It feels like it betrays the reverence this word emotes. That these are the things that we should hold closest to our souls. The things that in our times of wavering and wrought that we should grasp upon to hold steady.
To hold steady. To hold steady.
Sacrosanct.
Sacrosanct.
Sacrosanct.
I take a step into the morning.
A little more reverent.
#hugsandhi5s
Good shit! I enjoyed that Tarantino-esque intro for sure.