Shluffen

One of the features of my insomnia is that I sometimes wake up with a word on my lips like a fragment of a dream, and it keeps repeating itself like a song for the hour or two it takes for me to fall asleep again. And sometimes the word will divide like a cell, and two words will then repeat themselves, then three words, and you get the picture—a symphony of mental distractions that can keep me awake far longer than the brief surfacing into semi-consciousness that healthy sleepers experience. Last night, the initial word was facacta, which spawned altecocker, which led to meshugganah. Perhaps it was my unconscious offering an orchestral salute in Yiddish to my Jewish roots in recognition of Yom Kippur.