Last night I could not get to sleep. I mean I really couldn’t get to anything even involving relaxed. I was as tight as a spring and my mind was running in circles. Do you remember Peter Finch in Network? “I’m mad as Hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” Yes, that Peter Finch. I was probably beyond that.

So I decided to get up and walk into the kitchen. I guess I figured it was a good place to go since I was stewing and at the point of boiling over, only to return to a simmer to keep the cycle going. I got something to drink and some aspirin and came back and lay down.

I lay in a fetal-contracted near ball – my legs pulled up as far as they could go. When you are 62 years from fetalism, you are more an oval.

And it dawned at me at 2:30 in this early morning that this probably wasn’t going to work. So I rolled over and stretched out flat on my back with my hands on my midriff. I probably looked like a mummy. I lay there breathing slowly and telling all my muscles to just feel gravity. I felt better; enough better that I started to wonder about the hands on the midriff position.

“Do I want to be in a coffin with my hands like that? Would down at my side feel more comfortable?” I tried it and I wasn’t sure. So I went from on position to the other, asking myself  optometrist-like questions:  Number one or number two?  Want to try it again?

I was experimenting with a third modification – arms by my sides with the forearms elevated slightly on something soft when I did drop off to sleep.  That’s what I like about puzzles – you start focusing on all the variables and “poof”  your mind eases.

I guess the sleep was in the details.