Friday, February 03, 2006

When I can't sleep


Recent stuff from journal, mostly written in the dark when I can't sleep:

"Who is no one if not me?"

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"Air raid sirens/flying planes / choppers / trains last night beginning at 10 pm exactly how could I forget I'm near camp Pendleton?"

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"Happy baby in the eucalyptus."

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"I can't fucking sleep. Fuck!"

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"Why am I dreaming about dragons so much these days?"

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"I'm not really a family girl."

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-"I don't know you, what are you doing here?"
-"Eating lunch, staying dry. I like curried chicken."
-"Where are you staying?"
Obviously, I shouldn't have answered, but one of the pleasures of being lonely is that moment when the desire for loneliness is over.



~
And this very very cruel little vignette:

"I dated a French boy three years younger than me in Canton. He loved basketball. I am terrible at basketball, but in Guangzhou I could really play. I made all my freethrows. I even managed a few layups. I was not good at algebra--I'd solve for X only to find that X=X. Memorizing formulas is dull, but I like pattern and theme and so am very good at Baroque music. My little boyfriend tried hard, but the years between 12-14 are a low point in every young man's life. We went to Macau with the local chapter of the Hash House Harriers and he, tired from the long run through the mountains, went to sleep early. I went down to the hotel lobby to lend an hear to all the drunken men in their 40s. Few things make me more nostalgic than unbearable humidity and drunken 40some men in aloha print shirts."

2 comments:

Jessica Smith said...

fascinating. i love the last two, they seem not unlike the earlier prose work you showed me. i don't think you need a job, i think you should stay home and finish the prose piece and take walks on the beach. i also like the happy baby in the eucalyptus. it smells so good. (a happy baby what?)

tmorange said...

"Who is no one if not me?"

reminds me of the bit from the odyssey:

polyphemus the cyclops: who are you to come around and tell me what to do?

odysseus: i am noone (outis).

[time passes, O and his men put P's eye out with a sharpened forged tree trunk.]

P: aaaargh!

other cyclopses: what the f...?

P: aaaargh!

OC: P what is up with you man?

P: aaaargh! noone just put my eye out with a stick!

OC: that P, he so crazy...