I usually take a two-hour nap from one to four – Yogi Berra

I live to nap – and vice versa.

My after-lunch snooze is a physiological necessity and sensual delight.

No hour’s my favorite, each has its allure, but the sweetness of my nap is most reliable. Jane and I watch a lecture each day while we lunch. These days I eat soup for lunch and Jane either a sandwich or an apple. The lecture concerns some subject we’re inexpert in, meaning most. History, art, biography particularly please. (Jane can watch lectures about engineering, science, and mathematics: better she.) How sweet to bob on the ocean of one’s ignorance. We’re so small in comparison to all we’ll never know. Molecules can’t take themselves too seriously.

Lunch is my off-duty instant. I’ve been working since two a.m. or so, when I woke from my first sleep. By work I mean write. It’s not work, really, only the activity that defines me, making me feel I exist. I write from two to five, then from eight to eleven, after a second sleep. Six hours of writing leave me a wrung dishrag (or rung bell), nothing left. With luck I’ll have composed between two hundred and three hundred words per hour, for a total of twelve to eighteen hundred. I count my words to convince myself I’m not a superfluity on earth, that I am “doing something” – isn’t that weird? I enjoy writing well but don’t blame myself when I don’t. Effort I can dictate but not excellence. May my epitaph read, “He did his best.”

By lunch, mind and sinews can relax. Soup soothes. By lecture’s end I’m combatting hippopotamine yawns. Having treated myself to a Reese’s Piece or two (go on, why not two), I insert my ear-speakers (Airpods), dial up my music (is it a Brahms day – or Bach – or Barber?), and off I waft, easy as a feather, to instant depths. Goodbye, Trump! Goodbye, the idiocy of our kind! Goodbye, frets, regrets, stress! Let music bestow order on the confusion of being! Henry, too, sleeps – I suppose, because I do – though (he reminds me, with his little yawn) it’s not that easy being a dog.

I sleep an hour, more or less. I swear I’ve been listening to the music all along, but that can’t be right. Can you listen asleep? Is there science about that?

Waking, I’m glad, warm, satisfied – for no reason – glad to be alive, here, in love – to be free and whoever I am. The light is already fading (I am penning this midwinter), day’s fed up with being day. Winter light is the sourpuss who exits the party early. Summer light hugs, tousles, lingers.

What might I make in the little interval that remains between now and supper (either by ourselves, watching a movie, or together with family, friends)? Make? – Henry’s head cocks – like hell you will. He’s beside my work-bed pawing, licking me into action. I napped with you, you can walk with me – while there’s still light! (He speaks fluently if you listen.)

OK, have it your way, I pretend-grumble. Boots and parka are parked by the front door. I wave to Jane: Back in a few.

I’d report the weather is beautiful this dusk but it’s always beautiful if you give it time. I wonder as I walk what to write about next, the world is so full. Please not Trump – my nap maybe. Henry sprints, circles, leaps. He is so happy being alive – everything that is fills him to bursting.

Me too.