Samuel Beckett

It's the time of year when I can depend on my sleeplessness.

Every night there's a new case to treat.

One night it's with herbal tea, the next Trader Joe's honey roasted peanuts and a bad book. The next it's a dram of Glenfiddich scotch and a sleeping pill.

When nothing works I read real literature, putting it to its best use.

Samuel Beckett's books are best, especially early Beckett, Watt, and Murphy.

Sometimes I laugh so hard reading Beckett that tears run down my face; Beckett tears are silent and shaped like little peas. I read things that aren't what I'm looking for but I can't help but reading. "Once a certain degree of insight has been reached," said Wylie, "all men talk, when talk they must, the same tripe." (Murphy, p.39).

It's like Beckett is awake with me, though I know this can't be true in real time.

When I reach a point like this in Beckett I stop reading. Just as I know that it's not good to eat an apple late at night, that biting into a good apple packs as much punch as caffeine, I stop reading Beckett at this point.

No cure ever works twice consecutively, not even Beckett, but Beckett works one time the best.

Lea Ann says it's ok to take a bath when I can't sleep, but we have pretty tight quarters and I'm afraid that the noise might wake her. So a hot bath is out of the question since the possibility of waking her offsets whatever benefit a hot bath would bring to me. Lea Ann's not here at the moment, she's in Patagonia, but it's like she's still here because I wish she was.

When I wake late a night I go downstairs quietly, all by myself. There's nothing wrong with it, it's just the way things are. Gradually, these hours have become the time when I do all my real reading of real literature. I can't really read in the day, daylight's for taking instruction, filling out forms, for knowing what's going on.

People make a big deal about hermits, reclusives, monks, as if it's not normal. I'd say it's supra-normal human behavior to be alone and to see oneself as solitary.

Not that I like being alone at 3 a.m., that's not what I'm saying, I'd much rather be asleep which is another kind of aloneness.