Sleep Less

"How am I going to get to sleep? I know, I'll count the bars on the window: One, Two, Three - Sleep!" - Max Headroom with Art of Noise "Paranomia"
There I was, laying in bed, wondering when I would stop being completely aware of not being asleep. I thought of all the things that I could do if I went ahead and got up at four in the morning. The list was fairly short.
"To sleep, perchance to dream - ay, there's the rub." Hamlet (III, i, 65-68)
So there I stayed, trying hard to keep my eyes closed and not count the ticks of the clock in the living room. It is times like these that I wonder about the wisdom of having two analog clocks, a clanging Regulator and a cuckoo, with just one room separating them. Try as we might, they are never synchronized, and the ding-dong and the cuckoo never coincide for long. Especially late at night, or very early in the morning.
"Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." Harry Lime in "The Third Man"
In my head, I started to take a drive. I left my parents' house and drove east to 19th Street, then down to Balsam. I did a turn for turn route to our family's cabin in the mountains, stopping here and there to consider the options: fewer stop lights one way, easier left turns another. It took me a few tries to get all the way to Magnolia Road, but once I turned on to the dirt road, I followed it steadily up, switchbacks and steep climbs, all the way to Pine Glade Road, where I stopped to admire the row of mailboxes before I turned. Then the clock reminded me that I was still creeping toward time for my now completely superfluous alarm to go off.
"Well it’s all in your mind" Beck "All In Your Mind"
I sighed, and my wife told me she was awake too. That was some comfort. We talked in hushed tones, even though we knew our son would never wake up for our conversation. We whispered to keep our own illusion of sleep. We took some deep breaths, and we started to relax. Soon there was enough calm to feel drowsy, and I knew the heater would be firing up in just a few moments. I savored those minutes, and once I knew the bathroom floor would be warm under my feet, I dragged myself from under the covers and started my day.
"Woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head." Beatles "A Day In The Life"