The animal felt he was more tired than he should have been, and after waking before 10AM, having a cup of chilled tea, eating a hamburg patty, he went back to bed and slept 'til 4:30, waking feeling drained and barely capable of doing laundry or a single yoga pose.  Through the workweek, the first day off, and it had been busy the night before and all of the other nights.

"I said I was tired, Harv.  You think a lot of things when you're tired," Gary Cooper's character says to Lloyd Bridges character in High Noon, a well-written scene, one the animal thought of from time to time.  "What's it to you, Harv?  Seems like everyone and his brother wants me to leave town.  I can't do it."  Interesting.  That's a real man, disappointing his new wife Grace Kelly even, and in anguish, Gary Cooper says, slowly, clearly, with a pause, "I can't do it."

Then the animal was awake.  At dawn after yoga he took a walk in the woods, by the weedy path from which you could not see the stream through the growth, the kudzu vine taking over the wooded slopes from the muddy dirt path up.  He walked past a long stretch of chest high ragweed.  There were early joggers out in the woods, a waking world he was unfamiliar with.  He felt more like running, surprising himself with his pace up the hill along the smaller stream that fell evenly through piles of rocks.

The pendulum's sway, from the busy nights full of engaging people and conversation, the simple pleasure of being around food and wine and the relaxing conversations, then the other side of unstructured spaces of time spent with a little of this, a little of that, a little Buddhist meditation, but nothing all that convincing, looking for purpose, companionship, a place to fit in, but in need of work and reading.  Have I gone too far out for too long to ever find a job that suits me, he'd wonder, obviously good at the tending bar part, which was a simple task.  You'd almost feel guilty, as if you were just taking up space.

Humid like a steam bath after a nap.  Groceries at the Garden Market, the bounty of summer, lug that back along with white vinegar to clean the yoga mat, and shaving cream.  Then another trip down to the wine shop for a good value Pinot Noir, a Beaujolais imported by Kermit Lynch.  Stop to look in the storefront window of the bookshop, in to buy the first of Knausgaard celebrated new work My Struggle, part one.  Threat of thunder storms.  A day off and you have nothing but shit to write.  Buddha was smart just saying, well, that's all I have to say, then the noble silence.  Feeling weak like a kitten, bogged down in details, ragweed making the edge of the brain fuzzy and dull.  Lay back on the yoga mat, eyes rolling back in the head.

And then a bike ride.  Using yoga to climb a hill,  doing reps on its grade, not out of the saddle, patiently, the back governing the pedals, home, cool off, eat another burger, drink some Pinot Noir, and cracking open Knausgaard, My Struggle, Book 1, finding something worth reading finally.