STARING FROM THE STARS TO THE PILLOWS

If anyone/anything is out there among the stars, this is how I imagine they/it would see us down here on our crowded little blue planet. A maze of ant-hill networks furiously moving in all directions all the time without ever once looking up -- at one another or at the stars.

If activity is your thing, then the image will be impressive. We ants are action-oriented if nothing else. Accomplishment-oriented is a whole other thing. It seems that while real ants have Queen Ants to provide them a sense of direction and purpose, we ants occasionally elect them only to protest them.

The sight from the stars must, then, be a rather discouraging one. Personally, I suspect this is why the pillow was invented...!

Consider for a sleepy moment the grandness of the humble pillow. It comes in different styles -- large or little, plump or firm -- but blessedly always comfy. Yes, I said "comfy" because this is precisely what the pillow was meant to provide us. Comfort! security! rest! renewal! and perchance a few sweet dreams!

Don't smirk, for my pillow is extraordinarily important to me. In the morning I never forget to reassure it I will be returning soon. We have this symbiotic relationship. I need it and it needs me. [Well, actually my need is greater than its, but at night why quibble].

Pillows -- like Linus' little-blue-blanket -- are meant to bend, fold, twist and respond to our littlest demands. My routine is fairly precise, and my pillow understands it well. First I rest on it from a back-lying position ...then from a head-to-the-left-position...finally from a head-to-the-right position, from which blessed sleep eventually comes.

There is of course a vast number of position-plans available. What counts is not the position so much as the preparation. Preparing to enter into that mystic realm of rest and REM, dreams and discovery. Frankly, no matter how amazing the agendas of my days, the agendas of my nights are often significantly greater. Traveling to places and meeting people and doing things simply impossible on the waking side of my pillow.

Hence the indispensable pillow.

Which is why I [you too?] usually hate to hear the accursed alarm in the morning. It means this little ant will now have to re-join all the other little ants. Never once taking the precious time to really look at one another or at the stars...