Can't Sleep

Can’t sleep, fuck! And it has to be a night when Walker isn’t here.

Pi says, “At least that means you have more time to get into the little world of your novel.”

True, but as nice as that can be, it cannot beat a good night’s sleep.

She says, “How are you finding ‘Wolf Hall’?”

Uhh, I like it, but it doesn’t look like it will become a personal favorite. But I have been invested in the story of Henry VIII, and not just because of Showtime’s series “The Tudors”, though that helps. We have cut across it a few times, including a spin with Shakespeare. And Ms. Mantel does have the gift for immersing her readers into that other place, that other time. It is great to escape into, and, yes, it is nice to have for restless, sleepless nights like this one.

On Writing

"I don’t write to dream; I write to stop dreaming, to be more present. To tell my way toward clarity. I think I would be a writer even if I didn’t write. I’d have that observational inclination towards the ordinary—that open-mouthed stare at unprocessed existence going by. I write mostly for the process—of looking, thinking, naming, discovering. I think this is why many who might loosely be called documentarians—essayists, memoirists, literary journalists, photographers, nonfiction filmmakers, even biographical or documentary fiction writers—do what we do. We have an obsessive interest in presenting and pondering ordinary life, the day-to-day flow of things."

-- Greg Bottoms

David Foster Wallace

It has been a little while since we have had some David Foster Wallace mystique. This piece involves his heavy use of footnotes and draws the comparison to Samuel Coleridge, a writer of a couple of centuries ago. Yeah, I am not familiar with him either, but that is not important.

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Contemporaries were skeptical of Coleridge’s protestations [that he is too verbose], just as many people today are skeptical Wallace’s, but anyone who criticizes them should first think why it makes sense that a man who overuses footnotes would also become dependent on drugs and alcohol. Coleridge and Wallace were both acknowledged as having immense native brainpower—a friend of DFW’s described him as receiving more frames-per-second than most people—and both of them were great readers with great memories. Coleridge was nearly a child prodigy, reputed to be able to recite long passages from books he’d read only once.

These men could not have a thought without twelve sidebars, citations, and quibbles popping up from their mental recesses. The result: footnotes and digressions. The other result: an overwhelming desire, when the stimulation became too strong, to power down the machine for a while. “He once said to me that he wanted to write to shut up the voices in his head,” Wallace’s best friend told a reporter. “He said when you’re writing well, you establish a voice in your head, and it shuts up the other voices.” And alcohol shuts up all the voices.

-- Helen Rittlemeyer

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Daily Fun

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Sunday, March 31, 2013

None of the cats are here this morning. I don’t like that. Maybe it was a mistake to always have food on the patio ready for them. But, again --

Daimon cuts Monk off, “You have to favor your sleep.”

Exactly. Am I repeating myself.

“It’s a familiar theme.”

It’s an important point.

“We know.”

* * * *

Ruminating over my life, my blogging and book-blogging, and I wonder, “Is this really any better than if I stuck to playing solitaire, playing Bristol Fans and the like?” Despite the self-pity, I think it is different, is better. It’s like a having conversation, and writing it down gives it a little more dynamic than if I were merely talking to myself, for the written words make it a conversation across time. I am not saying that this is as good as talking with friends, but it does give the monologue a little more life, especially when one is, uh, older and we are talking about a conversation that cuts across decades. It is a very different ‘me’ when I was I was in my twenties from the ‘me’ that is closing in on fifty. Not as different as I would like, of course, but different.

* * * *

I see Jack didn’t get the weeds, after all. Is Pop disappointed by that? I thought he looked a little sad after Jack left? Maybe reflecting on the laziness, the uselessness of his sons.

If we get that rain, it may be for the best. It will give me a chance to pull the roots out.

* * * *

Pi says, “Don’t you think you are being a little mean keeping the cat dish inside, when it is perfectly fine weather outside?”

Perhaps. But I want to see Sammy come inside the house. I get the impression that he is determined never to come inside again, save for the eruption of a terrible storm, or the appearance of dragons.

“So, you are playing a power-game with your cat?”

Well, damn it! A little respect would be nice. Besides, there is a promise of rainy weather over the next couple of days, and Sammy needs to keep domesticated.

* * * *

Pi says, “So, Sammy has won this battle of wills? Good for him!”

Well, with Ms. Walker here, I cannot freely exercise as much control as I would like. So, yeah, I guess you can say he wins. But I don’t know if that is good for him. We are actually expecting some real rain, if you can believe it, and Sammy really does need to be a nice house cat.

* * * *

Within five minutes of letting Coco and Ash outside, it begins to rain.

Pi says, “At least you got Ash back in.”

It’s a start. Judging by the way that Sammy continues to lie out there on the lawn, even though it is raining, I am not feeling very optimistic.

“It is not storming. If the weather really starts to get a little nasty, I am sure Sammy will see the light.”

I don’t know. He is a cat. And where has Coco run off to? Cripes! Wherever it is, she cannot say she did not have fair warning to rush back home. If this thing becomes a storm, it is proving to be a slow-building one. Albeit a very promising one.

Daimon comes in, “Bah, I wouldn’t mind putting up a princely sum on the bet that it won’t rain enough to give the ground a decent wetting.”

Not a bad bet. We are soooo dry. But I wouldn’t bet.

* * * *

Coco comes to the patio, but Walker is seated at the table and Coco won’t come inside.

Pi says, “Relax! It’s not exactly storming out there. It’s not even drizzling.”

I know, but it is still playing with my nerves. And since she is practically a cripple, I don’t suppose it would be easy for her to oblige and leave the room for a couple of minutes. It might require a work-permit from the city to move that load.

* * * *

Walker has left the kitchen, but Coco is still spooked. Funny, in an excruciating and irritating kind of way, for all the worry about getting Sammy back in the house, at the end of the day, I’m at the door begging in vain for Coco to come inside.

The real kick in the groin: I actually had her across the threshold at one point and thought it was done, but before I could shut the door, she had scrammed back out again.

I was right not to want pets after Bo died. Why did Mother Grey have to drop her litter in our back yard?

Pi says, “Oh, life would be a lot more colorless and dull if it were not for those cats.”

Dullness works well for me. I think I would have liked more of that.

“Well, that is not what you got, and it has been for your own good!”

Lucky me!

“Truly.”