Itinerantdaughter's Blog

Goodnight, Moon

“In my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-

journey on the highway across America in tears

to the door of my cottage in the Western night”

~Allen Ginsberg

Hungover, in Baltimore at writing camp, eating nasty honey mustard and onion pretzels. There was a centipede in my room when I got here. I forgot Infinite Jest, and my pillow, but only the first is devastating. I want to write because my brain is buzzing but I still feel nauseated and so most likely will end up just watching Intervention until I pass out.

Sweet dreams, kiddos…

So I’m chilling, minding my business, cleaning my room, and there’s this documentary about People’s Temple playing on the television in the background. (I much prefer television as background noise these days, things I’ve seen usually, so I don’t have to pay close attention. Music just isn’t doing it for me.) So this particular documentary…I’ve seen three-quarters of it, like, a billion times, so I’m zoning out, organizing shoes, throwing stuff away, and the moment I decide to zone in, I hear…

“The first time I met Jim Jones was Easter 1953. My mother-in-law, Edith Cordell, had a monkey and it (very brief pause) hung itself, and she wanted to replace the monkey and so she looked in the Indianapolis Star, and in that Indianapolis Star was Jim Jones’ ad that he had some monkeys to sell.”

WHAT!? Never has a more ridiculous sentence been spoken.

More Jim Jones tomorrow…sleep well!

Putting on some sleeping music (see below) and pretending someone is stroking my hair. Even grown-ups want to be tucked in sometimes…

“Boots of Spanish Leather” by Bob Dylan

“Kolo Kolo” by Bobby McFerrin

“All I Need” by Air

“Julia” by The Beatles

“Tiger Mountain Peasant Song” by Fleet Foxes

“Further on Up the Road” by Johnny Cash

“River” by Joni Mitchell

“Chelsea Hotel No. 2” by Leonard Cohen

“Hey Joe” by Medeski, Martin and Wood

“Pink Moon” by Nick Drake

“Comptine D’un Autre Ete: L’Apres Midi” by Yann Tiersen

In your dream tonight, someone you love will hold your hand.

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.