Introspection

I saw the most beautiful thing the other day. I was at the eye doctor because my eyes were up to no good. My right eye, especially, was offending me. The eye doctor had me put my chin on a thing with a pile of little tissues on it and my forehead against another thing with more tissues and she shone this light into my eyes, one at a time, and looked at whatever she looked at. While she was doing this, the light reflected around inside my eyeball in such a way that I could see the inside of my eye. Or the blood vessel system, rather. This dark brown/black network of blood vessels on a bright, light sepia background, growing finer and more branched as they moved from the outside towards the center, which I suppose was the pupil, where there were no more blood vessels.

When I had gotten out of bed that morning, the insides of my eyeballs had not been on my list of concerns. They came as a total surprise. Thanks, life.

Nanowrimo 2008

I win, which means, I typed over 50,000 words in the month of November. This must be what James Joyce felt like when he finished the first draft of Ulysses. I can just see him eating a raisin bagel at Starbucks, squinting at his laptop, going,

The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring,

and,

ah yes I met do you remember Menton and who else who let me see that big babbyface I saw him and he not long married flirting with a young girl at Pooles Myriorama and turned my back on him when he slinked out looking quite conscious what harm but he had the impudence to make up to me one time well done to him mouth almighty and his boiled eyes of all the big stupoes I ever met and thats called a solicitor only for I hate having a long wrangle in bed or else if its not that its some little bitch or other he got in with somewhere or picked up on the sly if they only knew him as well as I do yes because the day before yesterday he was scribbling something a letter when I came into the front room for the matches to show him Dignams death in the paper as if something told me and he covered it up with the blottingpaper pretending to be thinking about business,

and,

It’s going to take a great deal of work to make this make sense.

Flying squirrels

We have something even better: the kittens can jump onto the kitchen counters now. Thanksgiving is going to be so much fun.

Chronology

3:00 AM – Wake up. Raining hard. The rain sounds nice. Everyone else is still sleeping, even the kittens. Go downstairs, let in the big cats, feed big cats and one kitten. Go looking throughout house for other kitten. FInd her, feed her too.

3:20 AM – It took 20 minutes to feed the cats?

3:25 AM – Start writing

4:30 AM – Update nanowrimo draft 1 word count. It’s over 50,000, yay. Far from finished, though. A mess, to be honest. Type a little more. Check email.

5:00 AM – Celebrate by going back to bed for an hour.

5:15 AM – Give up, go back downstairs to kitchen, hang out with Alpha.

6:00 AM – Pack lunch for Gamma.

6:15 AM – Shower, shave.

6:30 AM – Wake and feed Gamma. Empty dishwasher. Fill dishwasher. Clean litter boxes.

7:00 AM – Start nagging Gamma to get ready.

7:20 AM – Last call. We really have to leave now.

7:30 AM – Leave for school. Drop Gamma, continue on to work.

8:30 AM – 5:30 PM – Random shit. Maybe hit Apple store at lunch to look at xmas gifts for Beta.

7:00 PM – Run buffet at Beta’s harp concert, somehow.

8:00 PM – Lose all cognitive functioning, due to getting up at 3 AM.

9:00 PM – Go out for drinks with harp people after concert, etc.

10:00 PM – Go to bed or fall asleep in restaurant, depending on location.

Get with it, Monsanto

If kittens smelled like bacon, they’d be perfect.

On writing

3.30 AM is a good time to write. The house is quiet, except for the kittens rolling around the kitchen floor in a Tupperware mixing bowl, their current favorite toy after the concert harp, which is off-limits. Gamma is sleeping upstairs, Alpha is in Japan and Beta went back to her dorm last night.

If you close the kitchen door, Gamma can’t hear you when you slam your forehead on the kitchen table to wake yourself up every ten minutes.

In this fashion, 2000 words get written in, roughly, 2 hours.

Random words, mostly:

the,orange,the,shopping,list,a,water bottle,tile,ceiling,pyjamas.

Regarding the world

The world is a reel played by a one-legged woman.