insomnia, the oil sands

Another advantage of life at sea is time off, vacation, weeks of it at once, here on terra firma where surroundings sometimes spin when sitting still, although I know I'm not moving and haven't been drinking. And while the mind adapts and synapses reconcile, I remain confined to earthly predicaments, the same daily shit as everyone else, but I'm free at least to address entirety at my own pace, if not my own terms. I'm in possession of free will.

Yet a long haul on the night watch will sabotage circadian rhythms and deal you insomnia, wake you at 2 am. I've never been a night owl, prefer to wake with the sun, to bed under stars, leave twilight to the vampires and deviants. But there is an odd clarity to the afterlight, an enhanced consciousness, a visceral calm. There is amplified hearing, the slight sounds of insects and distant traffic, the creaking of old wood. Still for long enough, I crank the radio and clean house, purge closets and rearrange.

There's tons of energy talk on all the news outlets these days, and I listen to a report on the Alberta Oil Sands, where a mixture of sand, clay and a dense and viscous petroleum occurs naturally, and then is rather unnaturally expunged by huge machines. Early man reportedly used the mixture, called bitumen, for water-proofing and on stone tools as lubrication. Today, bitumen is blasted by hot-water canons and "upgraded" to produce a synthetic oil, which will eventually burn and release its carbon. To heat the water, producers burn natural gas, a relatively clean fuel. The entire process, given the eventual combustion of the oil, emits up to 45% more greenhouse gases than conventional oil drilling. Roughly half the oil produced in Canada, America's largest supplier, comes from the manipulation of butiminous sands. Surely, not the answer to our energy needs. Somewhat like growing corn to make ethanol, robbing Peter to pay Paul. It's hardly technology.

I mop floors and dust baseboards, eventually sit--and for a split second, everything spins. I'm reminded again of the great 921 earthquake in Taiwan, when the ground shook for a full week, more than 11 hundred aftershocks following a 7.6. I could put a glass of water on the coffee table in my fourth-story apartment, and it would never settle, a constant ripple, the earth moving every three or four seconds. It was like getting sea legs, and much like tonight, a bout of insomnia. I hear the first chirps of birds, open blinds to a lavender dawn, a sunrise obscured by neighborhood trees and houses.