I can’t sleep. I passed out on the sofa earlier. Passed out is an exaggeration and no, alcohol wasn’t involved. Shortly after my crappy bachelor dinner of frozen pizza, I sat on the sofa and surfed the net which led to closing my eyes for a few minutes while still sitting up. This was probably around 7pm. I woke up at 7:30, my neck was stiff because I was sleeping sitting up. I looked at the time and decided maybe just a little longer. I nestled into the corner of the couch, this time half-sitting but able to rest my head on the arm rest, the dog was crowding me on the other side. I fell back asleep. I woke up again at 8:30, moved to a different sofa (dog still crowding) and fell asleep again. An hour later I felt groggy and drunk from sleep. I went to bed but stayed up for a bit. I read a story and now at 10:30 / 11:00, I can’t sleep.
The story was good. I have no idea if it’s memoir or fiction – I guess it’s creative nonfiction. It connects several threads around the themes of distance and desire using the concepts of asymptotes and limits as a recurring touch-point. I like and am struck by the novelty of the structure and form of the story – short, slightly disjointed but in a way that all holds together, good language and imagery… It’s worth a read – here. A line that stood out for me reads: “A diminishing, the way denim wears at the knees over time or liquid evaporates into air or how a love can grow stale simply from having it too long, like a fruit left on the counter to ripen then rot.” I want to know how long it took the author to write that piece – how many revisions. It’s the type of thing I could see being written and re-written and then sat with until the form finally appears. I could reach out through Twitter, but that feels weird.
I turned the alarm on and the light out. I wrote a note on my phone: I hate that I can’t carry all the things that I read with me. I know in a day or two I’ll forget that even read this story or liked the form. Months from now, I’ll remember something about it but won’t know where to find it (unless I remember that I wrote about it here and included a link). There’s a sense of lost intimacy when this happens. All of the poems and articles I read and the podcasts I listen to… partially, if not mostly, gone. What’s left is a sense of “I read somewhere or I heard somewhere.” I feel bad that I can’t process them better or integrate them / remember them better. Especially the things I find on the net or on Twitter. So ephemeral when I want stickiness.
I tried to close my eyes to sleep. Suddenly I wanted to know why my friend from way back when never read or responded to the poems I had sent him: poems he had said he’d critique, and then after a year apologized for not getting to them and re-promised to critique. They’ve since been rejected by a few journals, and I’m getting stuck in this negative thought loop. I’m assuming they were so bad that he didn’t know what to say about them. I’ve read things like that. I can remember having to take an editing test for a job interview. I turned the test back in without having edited it or much of it (or at least I think I did). It had so many errors in it, I felt it was unfixable. I think I told the interviewer, in a real-world job situation, I wouldn’t edit something with this many mistakes in it, I’d send it back to the author and ask that they fix it first. I didn’t get that job. I wonder if my friend didn’t provide feedback because he didn’t know where to start. Maybe he didn’t want to hurt my feelings by telling me that steaming turds should be flushed not polished.
So here I am, unable to sleep. I slept too much earlier and I’m mildly consumed by doubt. I’m thinking if I want to get better at or be serious about this writing thing, I need some real feedback. And maybe more formal training. I keep thinking my regimen of books and my daily attempts at writing should be practice enough, but sometimes it’s helpful to have direction and boundaries. I probably need to write less here and focus more on structured/disciplined writing. As I wrap this nonsense up, I’m tempted to open up some old poems to revise, but I know in this mood, I’ll think nothing is worth revising. I’ll be bored with my own voice, structure, and themes. I’ll wish I could be an abstract painter and then realize I don’t know how to approach the subject and my paints are dried up and cracked. Should I describe a man at a bus stop…. a boy playing tag in the woods….? Do I begin with a question or a series of questions? From a note I wrote earlier tonight: “She was a woman accustomed to living a life always on the edge of maybe. I began to wonder what a pocket full of maybe might look like? Is it brightly colored, does it give off light. Is maybe a snow globe full of gathering storm clouds?” Can it be carried around like a wish coin or a rabbit’s foot or a locket with a picture?
I should try to get some sleep. There’s plenty of time for inspiration and self-doubt tomorrow.