Once in a while I experience time dislocation.  By that I mean a disruption in my accustomed sequence of things.  Time for us is a concatenation of events, causally related, more or less–that we have adapted to.  Sometimes something happens to upend those expectations.  If you stop to think you can imagine events that would  rip the fabric of ordinary time for you.

My day typically begins early at Starbucks.  I read and I write some.  That is the foundation of the work day which follows.  I like to spend time with poets, thinkers, individuals who take notice of things.

Today after waking I left the house for a scheduled routine medical procedure.  I’ve experienced the procedure before so I was spared the anxiety of the unknown.  I go out of my way to have a bit of non-medical conversation with the nurses, operating room staff, since that reminds us that we are all human beings, journeying together, mutually assisting when we can..

I have become a fan of anesthesia.  There is no better source of dreamless sleep.  No lying there waiting for fatigue to shut down the runaway mind, for sleep to come at some point.  The nurse pushes the plunger, the med goes into the IV line, and it’s “lights out.”  It’s instantaneous, without warning, or gradual fading of consciousness.  Thirty minutes later, the lights come up, I am groggy but without after thought of something surreal, ominous that emerged from my unconsciousness just before waking.  I’ll take this every time.

So late afternoon I am at Starbucks, a half day of ordinary time missing.  I found these tantalizing words close to the end of the chapter on Peoples and Fatherlands in Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil.

One encounters a rare human being
who is too comprehensive to find satisfaction
in any fatherlandisness
and knows how to love the south in the north
and the north in the south……….

A maker of music,
a genius to see a new beauty and seduction.
One who dreams of the future,
and feels at home
and knows how to roam
among great, beautiful,
lonely beasts of prey—–

Selected lines from #254 and #255

I think that routine is called for in order to reset time to the ordinary.

The sun will “rise,” tomorrow will come.