I’m Not Sleeping

Could be the allergies. Could be the dreams. Could be that the neighbors left the light on right over my bedroom window. Whatever. I’m not sleeping anymore.

The first time I woke up tonight was, in retrospect, pretty painless. I stirred from some random dream, visited the little boys room, put my arm over my eyes and slipped back into sleep. The second time was downright strange…

I’d somehow become Chad Michael Murray’s sidekick. After a long day of shooting (“Does every movie shoot in the same exact corner of the West Village?” I asked the key grip over a grilled cheese at craft services), we drive up into the hills (that’s the beauty of dreams: work in Manhattan, sleep in Hollywood) to his rather expansive (I remember thinking, ‘Has he really done this many movies?’), red adobe compound. There is a sweeping view of Los Angeles out the back door, and some sort of Indian burial shrine out the front. Inside is empty except for the kind of strange tchotchkes you’d except a teenage celebrity to own: a red bean bag chair, a giant cell phone (I’m talking six feet high, people), a big old TV, and two huge aquariums. Eliza Cuthbert is in the other room. I’m watching the dailies from this movie of his on the big old TV, and I’m thinking, ‘Hey, this is pretty good. I’m actually kind of moved here.’ Next thing I know, local news breaks into the dailies. The breaking story is that Chad Michael Murray’s neighbors are fire bombing his home. The shot is from a helicopter. The neighbors are lobbing flaming arrows from some sort of catapult-like contraption. And the reporter says, “He’s only going to have time to save important things like pets.” So the flames a licking at the windowsill, and we’re scrambling to get our shit together and get out of the house, but we’re not really having much success. Last thing I remember thinking was, ‘What about the turtle!?!’

And then I woke up.

I didn’t used to have any trouble sleeping whatsoever. In fact, I’m usually the first to go, and the last to rise. It’s kind of a new thing, maybe in the last year or so. And the last few months have been really bad. Last weekend I had to get up and read for an hour before I could go back to sleep. Sometimes, it’s close enough to morning that I just keep busy until the sun comes up. Not tonight, though: it’s just 4:43. And I’m supposed to run in two hours.

I’m not sure what it’s all about, this new insomnia of mine. Maybe it’s just the light, or the pollen. Maybe there’s a lot going on in my mind. Maybe my bedroom’s feng shui is all wrong. Maybe it’s the wind, or the noise from traffic on Columbus, or that soy shake I drank just before bed. I dunno. I gotta go back to sleep. The sun’s gonna rise any minute now, and I am not ready for it. Plus, I’ve got to rescue that turtle.