Itinerantdaughter's Blog

I have insomnia, these days, but it’s a clever insomnia. It waves a white flag and then once I’ve turned off the lights, manifests itself in a tossing and turning and endless ouroboros of thinking, a restlessness so frightening I am forced to turn on the light and do something, anything. Listen to half-an-hour-long Gregorian chants. Read Infinite Jest (okay, still on that. Give me a break, it’s over 1000 pages). Eat peanut butter straight from the jar. When I try again, it’s with trepidation. I make a rule that I am allowed to think about whatever I want, but I have to lie perfectly still. I look for that strange bioluminscent screen saver projected onto the back of my lids, but it’s like the insomnia has robbed me of that diversion. Get up, get up, get up. And the cycle begins again.

Today, to be specific, I gave myself some pep talks pre-bedtime. “It’s okay, Self,” I said. “You did an okay job today. So maybe you didn’t accomplish everything you set out to, but who does, really? In one day?” I commend myself for that-which-I-did-do: picked up my new television from my boss’s house, posted the previous, cleaned up my room (sort of), wrote a quick note and put it in an envelope and STAMPED it, ready to go, re-read part of a book I have been meaning to for quite some time (Autobiography by Janet Frame, highly recommended), took out the garbage (HUGE!), showered (also HUGE!), found my overnight bag, which I thought I had lost during one of the moves, the absence of which was DEVASTATING to me (capitalization does not do justice to my feelings), attempted to contact this pharmaceutical rep saleslady who gave me an Exogen 200 Bone Healing System a few years ago (long story), wrote some emails, was idle and dreamy for what I think was an appropriate amount of time, did not smoke one cigarette.

And yet as I lie down to sleep I think of tomorrow, and all the other tomorrows, the endless steppe of life before me, obstacles still ahead, ones that have faced me for what feels like eons : the cliched pain of unrequited love, and the banal, constant weight of money, or lack thereof. Where is the romantic poverty of yesteryear? The cheeky, belted-out love songs to Alphabet City-early-nineties-style destitution?

Woe is me.

Back to the basics, I guess. Counting sheep. In lieu of saying goodnight, I give you Roald Dahl’s red balloon.

This entry was posted on July 13, 2009 at 4:06 am and is filed under The sun has gone to bed.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.