There used to be a time when I was known for my sleeping ability. You name it, I could nap on it. Train. Bus. Cupboard. Standing. Curled up. I could do it. Anytime, anywhere.
Insomnia is an odd state of being. I was listening to a podcast the other night, as I tried my very best to quite the neurons starting a war in my head. It spoke of how only insomniacs understand the quietly tangible cloud that is being awake when you shouldn't. That is exactly what it is. A thick cloud which slows and speeds up time as it so pleases, leaving me to sit here and hit myself with a book until it clears. Try and be productive, your brain suggests.
You can't. At least, not with the useful things that would make your life easier. Your brain is more than happy to oblige enough processing power to lead you onto all sorts of useless endeavors and down creative rabbit holes. Ones that seem life changing at the time, but in the light of day just seem a little bit askew. I have a very odd short story about the moon trying to crush my house that I thought was the next post modern classic a few nights ago. Turns out it is just crazy dashed with jagged punctuation.
What I wouldn't give for a good nights sleep in a cupboard. On a plane. Give me a rattly, hell-raiser of a bus ride goddammit. I used to sleepwalk often, and have come to think that it must be the same active neurons that are making my life interesting at the moment. I hated them then, I hated waking up in odd rooms and without any knowledge of how you came to be there. Do I hate them now? I am too tired to know.
Ah well. When you finally give into the fact that unconsciousness isn't coming, the rabbit holes are quite incredible. The moon story, perhaps less so. It is still to be concluded (will the moon crush the house? We just don't know. Stay tuned!) but for now you can have this. Part 1 of the Insomnia sessions. Feel free to call me at 3am to tell me what you think, I'll be up.
Sunday, June 9, 2013
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Some things that mean the world to me.
I have a memory for places. For intangible qualities in the sunlight. For the feeling of the joining rubber fixings where the bus window meets the plastic frame, just above the dimpled and broken armrest. For how the window shook the whole way from San Francisco to Sacramento. For the deep belly freedom that I held close, like a secret. The kind of secret that is like holding in laughter, like when you are planning a surprise birthday. For the dry heat that hits when you get to the very odd, planned grid that is Sacramento city centre.
How the sun shone and I was sweaty in my denim jacket walking up 24th street in the Mission. How I got lost on the way to an old friend's house, but didn't mind. The bright orange hues of the trees and the blue of the sky, which I had not expected when I had left my hostel in the fog of downtown. How I wandered til I was certain I was wrong, and then how he spotted me out the window and met me in the street, after 2 years and little communication, with a flower and a smile. How we drank wine around a kitchen table and then got high in Dolores park. Of how he was a new person in so many senses, but an old soul trapped in a sadness. Of how I haven't seen him since.
I sat at my kitchen table three days ago and tried to recall the names of books that I had read while travelling two and a half years ago. There were four of them that I couldn't recall. But what I could tell you was the place where I acquired each one. Exactly what shelf in an Edinburgh bookstore, the kind with a coffee shop attached. How I sat in the red patterned bucket chair and read the first chapter, having known from the spine that this would be my book. The book that took me around the world to the Canadian wilderness and taught me about death, and that I left on a white bookshelf that was afixed to a wall in a large impersonal Dublin hostel by the river.
Of the two books that were exchanged for one another in a house in East LA. The house that was half a house, a cupboard under the stairs, a cave with fairy lights that shone blue, green and red with tinfoil around the globes. One book was set in LA, the other in New York. The house where I met my San Franciscan friend (an Oklahoman at heart) and his housemate, who was a wanderer and his lioness of a cat. How time stopped for a while. The climb up the hill behind the neighbourhood park, while everyone was resting, and how I saw and drew pictures of a menagerie of animals to keep the wanderer and the lioness safe. Of the one chapter of that book in which the protagonist created his own language, which was simply the word dorky with different inflections. And how the chapter was just the word dorky, over and over, page upon page. Of the wanderer, who will continue to wander in and out of my path.
The fourth book, I couldn't remember the name. I knew it was a name that jumped out at me, that could have either been wonderful or a self-help book. I knew the cover was yellow and white, and that is was set in the Mission, and that I had bought it in the Mission. I remembered it was haunting, and that the main character broke his arm and did not have enough money to get it set, so it healed in a deformed banana shape. I managed to work out the other three books by tracing my memories back, and a little help from google. This one was stuck. And there it was. On the bookshelf under my stairs, inbetween my housemates things.
It is called 'some things that mean the world to me'.
And I guess that's it. This is an insomnia rambling of the things that mean the world to me. The unplaceable, the intangible. The incredible, incredible things I have seen and done. The imprints of people who I will carry with me forever, even if I never see them again. The ones who I have seen again, and miss again. The ones who have visited, the ones who can't. All the decisions they help me make on a daily basis.
I could not sleep, so I started reading. And as the character walked down Valencia, I could feel the sun and sweat and see the orange again. And I could see the smile and flower from a kind stranger turned friend. I stopped reading. I held it close, like a secret. I hold you all close. Thank you.
How the sun shone and I was sweaty in my denim jacket walking up 24th street in the Mission. How I got lost on the way to an old friend's house, but didn't mind. The bright orange hues of the trees and the blue of the sky, which I had not expected when I had left my hostel in the fog of downtown. How I wandered til I was certain I was wrong, and then how he spotted me out the window and met me in the street, after 2 years and little communication, with a flower and a smile. How we drank wine around a kitchen table and then got high in Dolores park. Of how he was a new person in so many senses, but an old soul trapped in a sadness. Of how I haven't seen him since.
I sat at my kitchen table three days ago and tried to recall the names of books that I had read while travelling two and a half years ago. There were four of them that I couldn't recall. But what I could tell you was the place where I acquired each one. Exactly what shelf in an Edinburgh bookstore, the kind with a coffee shop attached. How I sat in the red patterned bucket chair and read the first chapter, having known from the spine that this would be my book. The book that took me around the world to the Canadian wilderness and taught me about death, and that I left on a white bookshelf that was afixed to a wall in a large impersonal Dublin hostel by the river.
Of the two books that were exchanged for one another in a house in East LA. The house that was half a house, a cupboard under the stairs, a cave with fairy lights that shone blue, green and red with tinfoil around the globes. One book was set in LA, the other in New York. The house where I met my San Franciscan friend (an Oklahoman at heart) and his housemate, who was a wanderer and his lioness of a cat. How time stopped for a while. The climb up the hill behind the neighbourhood park, while everyone was resting, and how I saw and drew pictures of a menagerie of animals to keep the wanderer and the lioness safe. Of the one chapter of that book in which the protagonist created his own language, which was simply the word dorky with different inflections. And how the chapter was just the word dorky, over and over, page upon page. Of the wanderer, who will continue to wander in and out of my path.
The fourth book, I couldn't remember the name. I knew it was a name that jumped out at me, that could have either been wonderful or a self-help book. I knew the cover was yellow and white, and that is was set in the Mission, and that I had bought it in the Mission. I remembered it was haunting, and that the main character broke his arm and did not have enough money to get it set, so it healed in a deformed banana shape. I managed to work out the other three books by tracing my memories back, and a little help from google. This one was stuck. And there it was. On the bookshelf under my stairs, inbetween my housemates things.
It is called 'some things that mean the world to me'.
And I guess that's it. This is an insomnia rambling of the things that mean the world to me. The unplaceable, the intangible. The incredible, incredible things I have seen and done. The imprints of people who I will carry with me forever, even if I never see them again. The ones who I have seen again, and miss again. The ones who have visited, the ones who can't. All the decisions they help me make on a daily basis.
I could not sleep, so I started reading. And as the character walked down Valencia, I could feel the sun and sweat and see the orange again. And I could see the smile and flower from a kind stranger turned friend. I stopped reading. I held it close, like a secret. I hold you all close. Thank you.
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