My smartest thought of 2009

About a week ago, maybe two, I woke up and had my smartest thought of 2009. So smart, in fact, I'm still somewhat trying to decode it.

Usually I rise with a jolt, prompted by my own personal psychic starter pistol and I'm off to the races mentally. A sped up scroll of the things to be done, what's left to do from yesterday's scroll, the things I'm dreading, maybe something good is on the roster, something embarrassing I did or fear I'll do, all the while digesting the series of bizarro dreams I just had. It would be a panic attack except I'm too tired. Waking up has always been traumatic.

Back to my smartest thought. I was waking, but there was no starting pistol. It was calm; a sedate swimming through honey, surfacing from sleep feeling, my beau's unbelievable snoring in the distance was even soothing. And eyes still closed, a massive mental supertitle appeared:

WITHOUT MEMORY, THERE CAN BE NO CONSCIENCE.

Weird, right? Who thinks that at 6am?

I rolled over and pretended to wake my beau with a kick by accident.

"I just had my smartest thought of 2009."

I repeated the phrase slowly to him like some kind of loony tune soothsayer.

His response, that kind of half snore/choke men do.

"Who said that?" Surely I was regurgitating.

"Jonathan Sacks?" He offered, probably praying I'd shut up.

"No, me I think."

The true irony is, of course, I meant to get up straight up and I write about it, but forgot. Or I fell back asleep. Or I got lost in the more mundane less super supertitles. I honestly can't recall.

Anyway, I remembered about an hour ago and it still seemed smart. If nothing else, an esoterically perfect sentiment for High Holidays.