4 AM, Watching Foxes, Waiting to Emerge

We find it hard to wake at a civilized hour.  At 4 AM we are wide-eyed, tossing and turning, reading and shutting off lights and turning them back on again.  Even bottles of wine and a heavy meal don't take the edge off that restlessness, and soon we find we are hungry again.  We have half a sandwich each, then some cheese on toast.  

We take turns kneeling at the window, starring out, feeling a wind on our tired faces.  Once a fox saunters across the street.  The-cat-we-briefly-adopted-who-now-hangs-out-nearby watches the fox with a mixture of interest and trepidation.  

At 3 PM we rove the house feeling weary in our bones, wanting a nap, a deep, nighttime sleep.  He takes a bath that lasts for over an hour while I re-read Harry Potter and wonder things like: am I dreaming?

We go into town and say hello to friends we haven't seen in over a month.

"I feel like I'm swimming," I say, miming a swimming motion.  They seem to understand.  Neither of us has any sense of time, or reality.  One day it rains, the next it is glorious.  We get off the bus and walk the wrong direction.  It is as Pico Iyer writes: "under jet-lag, you lose all sense of who or where you are."

We wait to emerge from the haze.