morn·​ings

There was a short, seemingly insignificant sentence in Jenny Slate's Little Weirds (which is phenomenal, by the way) about how she and her heart felt immediately upon waking up one morning. I'm curious about that - what's going on in my body and brain as I'm waking up? Allow me to follow my curiosity - here are some notations of the very first things I identified in my brain and body each morning for a week:

Day 1: Sunday

Briefly, I feel a thick rubberband gripping loosely around my temples. I didn’t sleep very well, repeatedly pressing myself deeper into a manual rest. There’s a thin veil of fleshed out cotton balls draped over my brain, so all the sounds have a slight blur. My feet crack satisfyingly as I circle them in the air above my bed. I hear the cheers of marathon supporters outside my apartment, though I can’t see them from my window. I think back to cheering on my ex as he ran the same marathon 2 years ago. Let Light be Light is playing in my head as I walk to the bathroom. My lower back is aching, and as I reach back to touch it, I feel how smooth my skin is.

Day 2: Monday

The alarm is so chipper I want to punch it. The bottoms of my feet feel like I stomped grapes with them, and my first thought is a bitter resentment towards the fact that work will be unproductive today & that I don’t have the support of my Chicago team for our Canadian training since it’s a US holiday. My eyes are crusty. I wanna love you but I don’t is in my head.

Day 3: Tuesday

Dream: After wandering through a massive labyrinth of dressing rooms with thrift store shirts and jackets, very Shein and Urban Outfitters, we ended up in a massive bathroom where I peed for like 2 minutes straight & a guy came up next to me and told me he was doing a cold wash (gargling mouthwash I guess), I’m like “cool dude go away” - and I thought I’d have peed my pants since the peeing felt so real in the dream. But no, all good, just an aggressive, 2319-esque alarm that jarred me awake. My back & wrist hurt from yoga & from reading propped up sideways on my bed last night.

Day 4: Wednesday

A dream involving sitting a group and I on top of the roof of a boarding home/restaurant, resting our feet on a tall, precarious stack of books and bookshelves until we (okay, I) accidentally knock them down and they tumble down from the roof onto the cars below. Some of the rubble landed on a short, balding man’s car & we could hear him cursing loudly. There was an auto shop across the street (with very inconsistent parking rules), so no problem. Lots of old people (plus Timothee Chalamait I think?) were hooking up in that boarding house. It was styled very Victorian, a labyrinth inside. I can feel my nose ring. I take a few morning toe touches in bed - love those. Mean Something plays in my head.

Day 5: Thursday

Woke up to a cool breeze and loud rain from the window by my head. Pure Imagination plays in my head as I untangle myself from my rat's nest of blanket/pillow (I keep a pillow between my knees, since it's good for your back when you're a side sleeper - which is good for your lungs by the way. But the pillow always gets Amuk! Amuk! Amuk! Amuk!). My back always hurts in the morning, I realize as I walk to the bathroom, considering how my dreams were affected by the movie I watched last night.

Day 6: Friday

I awoke drooling on my curled bicep. My head feels like a dehydrated perfume pillow, since I drank last night. Good in Bed loops in my head as I fumble my way out of my covers. I hear myself make a slight tear in my quilt, which makes me quickly awake and quietly sad. Leaving a dream in which I was a new member (or understudy?) of a theatrical dance group performing in a huge futuristic competition (the stage was a floating square; there was a storyline & characters & the audience was massive. Like several colosseums massive. The energy and competition felt like the fight for the kingdom in Black Panther. At one point, Will, Elle, Chris and I were together at an old timey diner, and then members of the dance crew came in and showed us that it was confusing and hard being friends with us Schwaars when we as siblings are so close. They came and stood in between us, making this ladder helix thing and lifted us up or something to effectively disconnect us. It felt like a great analogy in the dream (though unnecessarily divisive). Then I was in the house we were staying at (the dance crew) and it was covered in sawdust and they’d been communicating with either Sara Bareilles or the speaker from the Ted talk I watched last night (they have similar appearances).

Day 7: Saturday

Soaking up the snooze. All sorts of conversations, garbage trucks, and other ambient noises from my alley-side windows. Where do I go plays in my head. As I stand up, I feel the space in my collarbones widen, like someone is easing themselves into them, sliding gingerly in like a hot tub.