Thoughtlessness upon waking

Thoughtlessness upon waking.  Waking up, not every day but sometimes, and often enough, after a long restless night, in midday or struggling in the morning, after just one or two hours, at most, of sleep, I grab hold of my head, with one hand or both, lean into one hand or the other or both of them, not with a headache, or because there is some discomfort I could take care of with rest, water, and perhaps an aspirin, but because I am genuinely worried about my brain, that it has suffered irreparable damage from the night before, and the day that seemed to drip so faultlessly from that night, so effortlessly.  It is here, I think, that the argument for the mind or soul to be reducible to the brain and the brain to be identical to identity itself, or personality, for these, that is, to be reducible to body, and part of the body, comes most forcefully.  You can’t ignore it, even when you are all muddled and confused during the first hours and as though disoriented, when you feel, so tangibly, that you have lost part of yourself.  Even when you can’t take hold of such a tangible thing, because it is the brain, after all, and what we are searching for is part and parcel of, the condition for, our ability to search.  Realizing this, to my murky dismay, instead of searching in the morning, or in midday, for the lost part of myself, whatever passageway might now be forever blocked or smoothed over by some alteration of my brain’s composition, I hold my head for awhile, before getting up and starting as though all over.