Ellsworth Kelly's colorful narrations

I'd forgotten that I was gifted with the bonus insomnia package, the one with coupons that entitle me to wake up when it's raining. So I get up at 2 AM, pull the curtains, and sure enough it's raining--the fact that I can both see and hear the rain, seeing and hearing being the authentic touchstones of all true scientific inquiry--confirming my latent belief that socialism, not capitalism, is ultimately the best system to live under.

Close observation of anything becomes boring after a while, so I went on Facebook. But Facebook is a guilty pleasure and, like all guilty pleasures, is overwhelming, the rewards diminishing in direct proportion to the volume of Facebook posts read. Soon I was drowning in the cats and dogs of Facebook posts, and I went off-line, lest Facebook impair my storytelling capabilities.

Though I'd taken a vow of sobriety in the New Year, a sudden urge to sip irresponsibly threatened to overwhelm me. 3 a.m. What would it be? A shot of vodka or a scoop of Trader Joe's mint chip ice cream?

I closed my eyes and waxed philosophical: was I really interested in doing the soul work necessary to become a whole person or was I satisfied to merely clip a coupon from the catalog of human likenesses and go on with my life where it seem to be going.

In a chance encounter there's no second chance, you either connect or you don't connect and the one who doesn't connect eventually feels that he or she has missed something.