Tag Archives for insomnia

The Zen of Twitter

There was much buzz today about the Twitter / Facebook relationship after @ev’s talk at the Churchill Club last night in San Francisco. But in the wee hours, my particular Twitter moments were a bit quieter. Maybe just a bit.

I had a passing fantasy sometime between the insomniac hours of 3a and 5a today (which I passed largely by catching up on the Twitter stream of my friends and colleagues from “Old Europe” — thanks @yojibee, @oliver, @jamesfarrar and others for the company!) that Twitter – particularly via its direct-message functionality, could eventually become my only email interface. Then it would be “goodbye” to my perennially heavy inbox and the respective perennial bad feelings at not responding as I should — a burden lifted, a liability reduced.

Because in the Twitter-as-Inbox world, messages just fleet by, and only what is happening in the moment matters. Direct message queue? Irrelevant — plus, 140-character-dispatches are much easier to respond to than the typical heavy tome that I myself tend to compose. Anything important flit by yesterday or last week in one of the countless unread tweets? No worries — If it’s important enough, it would be retweeted.

Only the moment matters. Peace is every step. What a gift it would be! I could concentrate on my breathing. “Breathing in, I calm my body. Breathing out, I smile.”

But then again, it would have been nice to be sleeping. Or maybe cleaning out my email inbox.

ps: and hardly the first to coin that phrase!

awake

can’t sleep.
at otivo, everything buzzes. in this room, the hub buzzes, but i am told that there will soon be an ultraquiet hub in its place, though i am dubious about what that means. the refrigerator woke me because it was buzzing like an alarm clock. i took a walk through the rest of the floor, and in every room a computer or printer or hub or refrigerator buzzes. if not, then the freeway buzzes and honks and ebbs. all under the bright dome of willie.
but, the stars persist and orion is up, even higher, now …

notre dame

there he is, big orion, coming up over there in the dark of the east again.

here i am, once again, wide awake. some cycles keep repeating; home come some do, some don’t? some people aren’t here. some new people are?

i dreamt i met jane goodall. we were eating senegalese food in the mission and she was at a table nearby. the man gave us a whole cardamom pod in a red sauce for an appetizer, and she wanted to know what it was. gladly, i told her – she thought it was fabulous – and i heard my voice stuttering saying “mrs — doctor — uh ms goodall i am a big fan and i love what you do and (tears then coming to my eyes) you bring hope to this world and the most important thing…” suddenly we were walking through paris together beside the notre dame and i asked if she sought out the big churches while traveling and she laughed and said no– it was odd to see her next to the notre dame– and i said how coincidental, since i just accidentally came upon the notre dame while walking through paris with leanne.

sheila called out of the blue last night and we talked for awhile about the year. i got myself invited over to dinner, which will be, oh, about in twelve hours or so. i want to go back to sleep. but i have this taste of tamarind pod or i thought it was cardamom pod in my mouth.