10:00PM: I am the man at the airport staring at the birds, wanting to catch them from the rooftop rafters. I want them to be outside. I want them to be free. How did they get in here in the first place? Did they swoop in when the doors opened, or hide themselves in a luggage cart, or sneak in on tiny bow-legged feet, tiptoes clacking across the tile. How many birds live in these airports? Which airport has the most?

11:00PM: I went to Ethiopia, and though I know that Adis Ababa is not some sandy savannah, I stumbled across the dunes and found myself in an oasis, in green mountains and buildings painted with murals like the ones I saw at the Ethiopian church service in Cape Town. There is a black Mary and she’s smiling at me and her arms are open and there are so many women in the white shawl I saw the women wear at that same service and there are drums, drums, drums like the music played in that orange church and how has Ethiopia come into my life in so many ways, from students and friends, in the past four months?

Midnight: Some say it’s a witching hour, but I know that will come at 3:00, when I will look to the clock and see the time and I will think back to the first miniature novel I wrote, about a girl who learns she’s a witch. Of course. I wrote it on an old dial-up computer that had the sound of the internet starting, that scratching “Can you hear me?” call from the aliens in the netherworld. But now, it’s just milling about in my mind. Can I breathe myself into sleep? Meditate. This is a long breath in. This is a long breath out. Please, come, sleep.

1:00AM: I’m back on that mountain going up to the woods where the pie shop sits on the left side of the square. It’s always there, like Hartigan’s on Central Street in Evanston, and it, too, serves little ice cream cones that look like clowns and probably terrified many children, but I love them because there’s a jelly bean at the bottom. The pie shop has pies from the pie place at Mt. Lemmon that first burned down, then was resurrected, then was closed down. I ran on those trails as a teenager, and once ate a slice of pie and half a thing of fondue after a long trail run, and then had to make the van pull over on the descent so I can vomit on the window. Vomit laudanum, a poet friend of mine once wrote. We dated once, twice, and he served delicious cocktails, and I was 22 and too young to settle into poetry and silence and cat life.

2:00AM: I think I’m sleeping. But I’m not sure.

3:00AM: I knew I’d look at the clock at this time. That stupid movie I saw once on one of those high school dates where the boy wants to make out with you the whole time and you’re actually more interested in the movie than the man with his panting tongue–The Exorcism of Emily Rose. Most people thought it was awful. Cinematically, perhaps. I just remember her body contorting, and the lawyer waking at 3:00AM, and how so many cultures in so many places still practice exorcisms. 3:00AM doesn’t feel quite safe. It feels like an opening into the other. Into that part of me that still wishes desperately for Harry Potter worlds and the chance to see something truly magical. But then again, I’ve seen and heard stories of communicating with those who have passed. I’ve felt their presence, in the chill of a wind that blows a door open, with the soul doctor, the sangoma, in South Africa, with my friend practicing reiki on me in my back room when my grandpa came to visit and he walked slow, dragging long saguaro limbs.

4:00AM: I wake in a panic, or have I been awake this whole time, and my mind turns back to the dream of a field, a soccer field, where the Aztecs played ball and the champions were sacrificed. In Teotihuacan, there is such a field 17 meters beneath the soil. It is still be excavated by geothermal radar, by a Japanese company working with the Mexican archeologists, and what does the earth say beneath our feet? Could I excavate my way to some sort of truth if I dug deep enough? I am the earth beneath the concrete, and I breathe, and I beg for some air, and the weight of humanity suffocates me with her cities. Quick, I bury my toes in the dirt, scrunch them around, place my fingers in the soil, and hold onto some sense of home.

5:00AM: 1 sheep. 2 sheep. 3 sheep. 55.

6:00AM: I’m actually feeling sleepy. Shit.

9:00AM: Well, so much for rising with the sunrise, in the style of Mary Oliver, in the style of my ideal self. I don’t know why my mind can’t be quiet. I asked my counselor the other day. It’s been 3 weeks of on and off insomnia. I told her I was going through a phase. “Insomnia sucks,” she said. “But remember, we’re natural sleepers, so this too will pass.” Good words. I’ll think on them later tonight when I repeat this process. Wonder where I’ll be dream-adventuring next.