I write this on a grey morning, the light diffuse like during a dour afternoon rain that permeates the air with that cold color, taking up the light of the sun and rinsing it. I woke up on many afternoons like that and I wondered how long I had slept. The difference between then and now is the sound of waking birds replaces the patter of rain.

It used to be that I could fall asleep easily, unburdened by anything, welcomed into oblivion by a cool night breeze and the softest bed. Now, going to sleep is itself the burden. I used to sleep in order to escape the ruins of the day, to flee the remnants of this terrible sacked city. But now, there is no promise in sleep, no assurance that tomorrow will be a new day and that when I wake, life will begin anew for me. I know that weariness does not subside after waking and the days and weeks and months will continue to wither like dead ivy defacing this ghastly mansion that is the state of my life.

What I remember is the spring afternoons when the light shone through my window and I, lying in bed, could see, reflected in the ceiling light fixtures, the driveway and the edges of the front lawn, rotundly mirrored in that opaque glass bowl. It was magnificent beauty for the light that crisply blazed the world. I lay in my bed in the shade of the room, and the air smelled so clean like the world had baked golden and I was bathed in the pure white vapors that emanated thereof as I lay in my bed, cooling off, cold, numb to everything else. Every week this scene played out each spring on the sunny days when I slept in order to escape the tremendous beauty of the world in these memories. I would appreciate the light and the cleanness and the quietness until I was no longer conscious of it and I joined the universe at large.