It was either the CBS or NBC local morning news broadcast and it was around five thirty this morning that I was watching this, stuffing my face with food, drugged out of my mind on Tylenol PM, yet still awake, tellling myself that I should eat food, yes food, before going to bed because I was hungry and even though I was feeling the effects of this sleep medication, I was afraid I would sleep in fits if I was hungry, if I had even the slightest reason to want to get up, and man, the dialogues I had with myself last night while waiting for two different trains, which in case you did not know, do not run too often at five in the am, and on this news broadcast, I couldn't understand if it was my tiredness or if there was really something so absurd broadcast to commuters and early risers all across this tri-state area, what people thought of this who were coming out of sleep reluctantly, grudgingly, if their perceptions of this news were in any way distinct from mine - if the tiredness of rising is so different from that of about to go to sleep and what accounts for that difference.

I heard Tina's "Proud Mary" in the background of the weather report and I thought it must have just been a problem with my television, that the audio frequency from another station was bleeding into this one, but no, when it got to the fast part, the weather man, in some fancy mod leather boots said, "Take it away, Ike and Tina," and danced across the weather map of the US out of the picture as the seven day forecast played to the fast part of the song and then there was a dancing penguin over today's day. And I was so confused by this dancing penguin, but the weatherman was so excited, seemingly perversley excited by it, any sort of excitement at that hour of the morning seems perverse, and at the very least, cracked. And on days when we were supposed to hit fifty, the dancing penguin was shown, and then the weatherman cued whoever in the booth to have the penguin dance across the screen this way, then that way, then to sit on the shoulder of one of the newscasters, and all of this was totally compelling this morning for me. I stared open mouthed between bites of the ham and cheese sandwich I had made for myself, watching this in the dark because the lights were too much for my eyes at that point after working fourteen hours and why I related that, I do not know. I am not sure what the point of that was, I really think I was going to try to use that to start thoughts upon another subject, namely my mental faculties and how riding the subway this morning at the crazy hour, when it is nothing but middle aged crazy, perhaps homeless men who seem overdressed and I wondered what they were like in their twenties and whether I will be one of those crazy men with canes having energetic talks with other crazy men riding the trains anywhere, staying out of the cold. And right now, I am just riding those trains anywhere and maybe that sort of scares me, but I don't know, there is a joy and a nervousness, that you could easily cry or giggle, just this nervousness when you are running on empty and ha, time to hop on the trains again and work another graveyard shift and listen to my headphones and tap my feet, my right foot actually, so the singular case is the more proper one, tapping that one foot up and down, a method of staying awake and not stopping.