8am. I have not often seen 8am these past several years, except those days when I reached it from the other side. Once or twice I have stayed up as late as 11am, but many debaucherous nights have reached the 8am hour. But this morning I am restless. Twitchy. My mind rattles with thoughts that skip like stones but never sink into a deep, torpid lake.

Casting about, as I like to say. "Casting about" sounds ambitious to me this morning. Positive. From one side of 8am that expression sounds hopeful, from the other side it sounds directionless.

Casting is commonly used as a fishing term, is it not? Cast your line into the sea.

"Cast your sails" is another nautical expression, one that I think fails for lack of eternity and lack of promise.

Metaphorically, casting a line or a net into the sea sends your ambitions into the unknown. But it does promise (perhaps wrongly) a reward. Casting anchor, with a similar sense of optimism, establishes a foundation, but in the unknown deeps.

Casting implies throwing. Hurling. Not wasteful throwing, but flailing. Cast out the heretics!

"Cast your sails" suggests you throw it all away, that you take your means of direction and discard it.

Even the more rakish "Cast your lots" has some glimmer of hope that a return will come from the gesture.

Perhaps casting is too hopeful a term for me. Blasting, maybe. Blasting words. Blasting thoughts. Excremental brain blasting. Cast my blast into the deeps. Come to think of it, I think "cast up" means to vomit.