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tuesday, february 16, 1999, 04:16 there is something that i find very comforting in falling asleep on a couch while trying to do my reading. it's the feeling of having my eyes slowly fall closed as they scan across a page and feeling my head slip down to the pillow as music plays in the background and knowing that i'll inevitably wake up three hours later, a bit confused and very disoriented and stagger to my bedroom where i will sleep for another few hours. tonight, i fell asleep on the couch and woke up three cds later, first breaking out of the sleep during one particularly loud part of jesus christ superstar and floating in that non-sleeping far from waking zone throughout the rest of the musical until, as they begin the crucifixion, the door to the apartment crept open and my roommate slipped into the apartment after having spent a long night in the theatre. we talked for a bit, at which point he went up to sleep, not having the luxury i just did of a couple of hours of not full restfulness but at least quite literally, "shut eye." and now i'm awake. while i am tired enough to sleep now, with that special type of behind the eyes pain that only comes from wanting to crawl into bed and never see the light of day again, i am unwilling to do so. having spent that other time tonight sleeping, i feel that i owe it to myself to not be asleep right now. to do other things with my time. to do other things while the rest of the apartment sleeps. ... i had coffee with a girl tonight. i can't really say anything more about it. hrm. there are just no words in me right now to talk about it. ... it's an unsettling thought to know that any number of things could have gone a little bit more askew and someone could be dead and it could be all your fault. or mine, for that matter. i went to see a play yesterday. and, being as this play was in a space that i tend to think of as my own, even though i had nothing (very little) to do with the production, i was doing little things like counting the heads of the people walking in and thinking about how we were way over our capacity and how it was great that all these people were getting to see theatre and all that young, rah rah theatre stuff. that is, i really didn't think much about it at all. the play began. soon thereafter, i felt a knee in my back. shuffling around, i thought to myself. it's bound to happen. especially since we've pack two hundred people into a space meant for half that number. more pressure on my back, and then more movement. the monologue was winding down. and all of a sudden, a head appeared to my left. eyes closed, drool running out of the corner of his mouth. this kid is not okay went the thought in my head. but what to do? i froze, just as did most people around me, until we broke the confusion, had the lights turned on, and, through someone (not any of us, not any of the resposible ones in the group) taking charge and pulling him up out of the space between the seating risers (they grabbing shoulders and i grabbing untagling legs and you never really know how heavy a person is until they are completely dead weight and you are trying to pick them up) and laying him out and waking him up and calling the ambulance and having him taken out into the parking lot and brought to the hospital. yeah, i was scared. sure, the kid had a heart condition and sure the room was really hot, but when i finally thought about it later. and i thought about how much worse it could have been and how if something worse had happened how unprepared i was and how response time was so slow in such a packed room and how i really could be held responsbile, if not in the mind of others (though overcrowding a house and not trying to fix it could be pinned on us) then definitely in my own mind. what could have happened didn't happen. what did happen happened as well as it could have. and, from now on, i'll always be waiting for it to happen again.
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