Why Do The Birds Sing At This Hour?

It's such a strange time to hear birdsong--so dark in the house, but the suggestion of a washed out shade of midnight peeking in the skylights. But no light, not yet.

They trill away, sounding the inevitable dawn, and I look up from whatever piece of glowing electrical technology I've used to pass away another night and I think: this is really just silly, at some point I will have to start sleeping at night again. What will it take? How little sleep can a person survive with?  This is just silly.

Pushing, pulling, and prodding myself through the days. Trying in small, mostly pathetic ways to effect improvements, better the situation. And it seems to be just one long continuous cycle of experimentation--fussing with the recipe, tweaking the volts, tightening the screws--with no real results.

And certainly no real improvements. Logic dictates that half assed endeavors lead to half assed results. But where is the moment that you can recharge yourself, replenish your stores, to run full tilt at life once again? When you have drained the reserves, what's left to draw upon?

I'm actually not being bleak, I'm really asking.

People here like to ask you where you come from. When you know that about someone, you feel that you know something about where they are going. It's not an easy question for me to answer--people hear the wrong things in what I say. I try to answer "This is where I lived last," or "This is where I went to elementary school." I try to say something in context and relation to their question, because for some insipid reason I am haunted by the need for precision and veracity even in the most mundane of topics.

But something has changed. Because I don't think that even knowing, really knowing, where I come from matters anymore. I don't think it reveals what you think. I don't think there's much to say about me, at all.

The crows are cawing now. What do all those warbled notes mean, what are the birds so intent on saying to each other? Do they sing all day, and this is just the only time I ever notice?