driving_while_dozing
stork daddy he would sometimes drive up to near la to pick up the weed. he used to like to take the drive late at night and go straight through, sleeping maybe two hours between the ride to and the ride back. it was always the same, stark night, with lights approaching like pearls strung out on the cobwebs of his misty bleary eyes - and then early morning with the same stretch of road over and over again with the same raven hopping across or flying across, left to right or right to left but always there. he would pass under overpasses where bats would circle out and then return to tight warm tumor clusters. the less sleep he had, the better. he loved that feeling of his eyes sinking, or crossing. he imagined careening off into one of the canyons, into an eighteen wheeler, and would it really even matter? so some people wouldn't get their weed and so he wouldn't return to those who love him or had a use for him. he thought about emotions and life a lot when he was tired. if you ever wanted to see how fragile they are, how fragile all of our kingdoms are, just deprive yourself of sleep. you could be told that the entire world depends on your staying awake one more hour, and at a certain point, you won't be able to do it. not sleeping, seeing how long you could drive on awake, was like testing the limits of your love. when did it disappear in the drowning heaviness behind your eyes, at the back of your skull. one moment the skyline was scenic, was the royal road back to your true love, and the other it was nightmarish, bombarding you with sudden bursts of alertness, and yet not enough to keep you in this world. nobody was as full of love, or peace, or anger, or any of it as they thought they were. the tired knew this. 040517
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birdmad three weeks before my twentyfifth birthday driving home from the sixteenth hour of a ten hour shift, down by the junkyards that sit by the river's edge.

two four-day work-weeks run into one eight-day block, the call_centre paid shit so when they offered overtime i jumped for as much as i could get since my roommates, my so-called friends were turning out to be the biggest fucking bunch of deadbeats in the world

i hadn't slept in nearly five days, going through a bottle and ahalf of no-doz each day to stay jacked up enough to survive the sleep-ionducing environment of the phone bank.

when my four day weekend finally came the weight of sleep was on me like a cinderblock on the back of an ant, i bought a can of red bull and washed down five no-doz with it and waited a few minutes hoping it would kick in and hold up long enough to get me through the midday traffic.

I sped down the 202 loop and made my way to the southern branch of the westbound I-10 freeway.

Getting off, i found myself detoured by a wreck and had to cut back to 19th and Broadway, the river's edge and the early crowd of assholes who thought they were going to spot the parts for their cars from the road, a mile long trafic jam of people doing 20 MPH in a 45 zone

punching myself in the leg and then jabbing my leg with my pen to keep awake as the exhaustion swept over.

...at 5 MPH, i closed my eyes and bumped another car, the jolt and the cursing and yelling of the driver i had hit woke me up and the warning ticket i got from the cop it happened in front of made sure that it took me another houlr to fall asleep once i made it the last three quarters of a mile to my house
040517
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stork daddy yeah the leg punching is one of the last attempts. biting my own hand is another. or you scrunch your eyes and move forward a little. the strangest sensation is when you're moving your head from side to side looking away from the road and back to it just to stay awake, and you still almost fall asleep even moving like that. 040517
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