Late Nights with Gin

So, here I sit late on a Tuesday evening with a gin and tonic. I normally reserve the gin and tonic for Wednesdays to celebrate hump day. But, work has been so horrible lately that I felt like I needed one, or two tonight.

Nothing soothes the soul like smooth gin. Bombay sapphire, to be exact. It just sort of slides down your throat, warming your insides as it goes, distributing it’s powers through the body until you start to feel “settled.” Mix it with a little tonic water with lime and life is damn good.

It’s funny how I sit here late at night often to the sound of nothing but the humming of the refrigerator. The house seems so much larger when it is quiet. My cat roams aimlessly around, wanting me to pet her, but I am just not in the mood. I want to read, but I am afraid I will fall asleep while reading, thus losing what I have learned from reading. Reading calms me down and helps me focus my thoughts for some reason. I want to write poetry again, but words just don’t seem to come to me as easily as they used to.

So I am left with thinking, which always floods my mind with too many thoughts, to the point where I can’t seem to do anything else. Thinking too much is the downfall of man, causing indecisiveness, uncertainty, and sleeplessness. The problem seems to be not being able to regulate what thoughts appear.

I guess I could if I tried, but what enormous brainpower and focus that must take. Oft times, I just don’t even try and let everything flow and see where it leads me. Sort of like the deck at this house I lived in down on settlers landing road in Hampton.

The guy that owned the house I was renting had a deck and a very large flower garden in the back. Each spring, the flowers would bloom to the point where my daughter and I would pick some every morning just to try to keep the growth under control.

But during those times I would get up a little early, grab some coffee, sit out on the deck, and just take in the aroma of the flowers and let things go to see where I went. My thoughts during those quiet times took me to places that I often didn’t want to return from.

So when I sit here by myself at night and marvel at the vastness of quietness, I sometimes get the same feelings.