Insomnia

These days he suffers of insomnia. He goes to bed at about 10.00 p.m. and to fall asleep in a good mood he listens to Comedy USA from XM satellite radio. Often he is laughing the tears in his eyes for what the comedians are saying and this relaxes and makes the mind peaceful. When the punch lines do not reach most of his brain cells anymore, because they have already travelled to the land of the 1000 dreams, he switches off the radio and existence ceases to exist.
He hopes he will sleep until the sun rises from the Sea of Cortez next to his motor home. In order to achieve this objective he has tired himself out during the day. Besides all kinds of physical activities doing little jobs in and around the motor home, he makes a 2-hour beach walk and 45 minutes run every day. In the evening he drinks a Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime caffeine free cup of tea.
But at around 03.00 a.m. he wakes up, ready to start life again. He feels like having breakfast and the urge to start working again. Full of energy in the middle of the night. But outside it is still completely dark and the roosters of the rancho haven’t started waking up the world yet.
What to do?
Sometimes he switches on the radio again to listen to the BBC Worldservice, ABC or NPR but the reports on the war in Iraq make different tears.
So, he prefers to think and of course his favourite subject is photography.
Last night he thought this:

Object or subject. These are two key aspects of photography.
A picture of a person can show an object or a subject.
The person is an object when the photographer has not established a relationship with the person and this can be seen and felt in the result. We, the spectators of the picture, look at a person in an image but cannot get a personal link with that person.
The photographer, who is instrumental to achieve this, has not been able to establish the link.
When the person in the picture is a subject, it is all about that person. We are subjected to that person. This because the photographer opened up for the person to be who the person is and made that person enough comfortable to be in front of the camera without hesitation nor reservation.
The photographer is able to get the person portrayed involved.
A photographer who is able to make pictures of people as subjects has first of all mastered understanding life to a high level. And loves life and loves people.

By the time these thoughts on photography have crystallized he hears the cock crowing and is happy a new day has become available to celebrate the beauty of it.

But why is he suffering of insomnia? One reason is that he has so much energy. In fact 5 hours of sleep will do. Another reason is that he is easily excited about the events in his life. Right now he is in the process of buying a Mitsubishi FUSO FG four-wheel drive truck and designing and having it build into an expedition vehicle. And he is excited and can’t wait for his daily communication with his Princess.

He is hungry to live. Enjoying it so much. Happy to be productive and creative. Why waste time sleeping?