falling asleep while reading

the process begins & though you
understand where it will end up
as you have certainly been there
before you let yourself drift the
whole while the characters that
were once so vibrant in your head
now slowly leaving the situation
altogether drifting seething in the
air thinning like smoke from a
candle growing distant and curving
twisting itself right up to the
ceiling where it may very well
completely dissipate---a moment
ago you were sitting in that very
same denny’s in japan that main
character “mary asai” had been
sitting quietly behind glasses
puffing away at her cigs & drinking
java at before the nameless jazz
trombonist walked through the door
sitting down with her before asking
politely to do so---you were at that
booth, you were sitting beside the
both of them listening to him banter
on in the attempt to flirt with the
younger cuter sister of the beauty
queen whom we will learn more about
as the tale carries on (you know this
because this is the 2nd time reading
murakami’s after dark, just one of the
many many marvels that he has so
graciously woven for our perusal in
his lifetime---reading such a perfectly
orchestrated tale can’t be done only
once)---yet you feel your eyes falling,
the lids are doing ab crunches for the
eyes, you know they must have been
paying attention during the late late
night channel flicking & pausing at
whatever moronic exercise scheme was
being shot out at you prior to the birds
awaking & chirping---you let your eyes
get lazy however & the crunches started
to waver, leaving a final slump where
the lashes of the top kissed the lashes on
the bottom for a little too long, certainly
if they had been in a library, a grocery store
or another public place someone might have
shouted “get a room!”---then you begin to
take note of the extremities that you can no
longer define now that your eyes are shut
tight---the hands the arms the legs they seem
to have begun evaporating themselves,
meshing with the whole outside & knowing
full well that you are not fully asleep yet &
still a new feeling maybe a numbness, for
lack of a better term---it begins to wash
over you---now you ponder is this what
people speak of when they are meditating?
but it can’t be because people who do so
brag of focus & you are clearly not there yet,
as your mind remembers david blaine
speaking about a quick trick he learned when
he was a kid where in knowing already that
smoke itself is flammable, you can put a candle
out then hold a new match in the drifting
smoke which will thus ignite it & the flame
will follow that smoke trail right back down to
the candle itself, re-lighting it---this new
energy flowing in your brain can’t add itself
to the tired sleeping feeling so instead it now
contributes to this new awakeness as the writer
who was reading & was invested in this
wondrous story, sitting at the denny’s, walking
through the conversation with these two
young people comes to a close---he gets up
from his chair, eyes wide & alert---he sits down
at his PC and his fingers begin to tip-toe over
the keys. voila!