Sleepwalking

I have slept like it's spring for the last several days. Here we are in early January, delighting in days of 65 and 70 degree weather. The plants and trees must be wondering what is going on.

My nights have been filled with much tossing and turning. The bed clothes, still heavy for fear of winter, have been burdensome and warm. The air has been full of something akin to wonder and desperation; too humid for this time of year. I feel the wrongness of the season in my chest.

Last night I fell asleep early as I tried to rid myself of a raging headache. My dreams were vivid and grandiose - a friend murdered someone, and then covered up the crime as if it happened 500 years ago. She left clues in mortar and behind walls which I somehow tore down in a search for the truth. There was a foot race going on at the same time and I recall flashes of bright colors, neon green and orange and so on. I remember blinding distractions.

When I woke, I was not in my tangled bed, but in another room of the house. My feet were shod with Crocs, which I now use for house shoes because of my heel spur. How did I get here? I wondered. You've been sleepwalking, came the inner reply.

I have not moved about the house in my sleep for many years (or at least, not that I am aware of). This morning I wondered if it was the headache, or the lack of supper, or the wrong combination of vitamins on an empty stomach.

But I think it was none of that. I think instead it was the weather, this too-warm air that is making the forsythia bud two months ahead of its time. I think it was the force of a front moving in, this balance between hot and cold that brings the winds and forces clouds to race across the sky like the breath of God is chasing after them. I walked without awareness because the earth, so good and true and strong, trembled with change. I felt the pull, the itch, the urge, to reach up and move in anticipation of the difference, and in my sleep, with my conscience quieted, I simply got up to dance.