Up Late, Story Idea, Still Unemployed

Up late again. Usually I sit up and read until 2:30, sometimes 3:00, then take my Seroquel and head to bed. I am currently reading Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment,” so far a very good read. I want to read more Henry Miller. I’ve only read Tropic of Cancer and one titled “The Books in My Life.”

Sometimes strange thoughts come to me. Like I was sitting here earlier, could have been yesterday, although I am fairly certain it was earlier while I was in the bathroom, in agony, shitting fire from the rear (for what reason I know not—could have been the pizza from last night). I was staring intently at a clock that an old friend, Rick, bought me for Christmas. It’s a clock embedded in a porcelain scene of a lighthouse in Maine, which is on a rocky ridge with billowy clouds in the sky. But I began thinking of a story in the second person, which I normally don’t like, but then it seemed kind of neat. I then began to rethink it in the third person and then the first person. Second and thirds sounded the best to me. Here goes:

It was dark out, near midnight and it was damp from the rain. A fog was rolling in from the coast and up ahead some distance away over a hill you could see the pulsing light of a working lighthouse. You’re walking up a gravel road surrounded by woods on either side and you’re wet and shivering and strange thoughts accost your mind. You’re wondering how you came to be wandering. You remember having stopped in a diner to get in out of the rain, but that was hours ago and you used a dollar to buy a coffee.

You pull your collar up closer to your neck as you feel the wind pick up and the chill air cut across your face and neck. You’re wearing a black woolen cap and torn black gloves. Your coat is old and worn. You hear something behind you. A car coming up the road from the distance, you think. You look behind you and see light dancing about the fog and you’re gripped with fear. So much so that you freeze and watch as the light comes closer. You cannot see the headlights yet, but the light cutting through and bouncing around in the fog seems to be getting brighter. You look to either side of the road and see only the trees that are at the edge and you’re not sure if there is a drop, but you jump to your right and grab onto a tree and slide down and realize that your lying almost vertically on wet dirt and decay, holding onto a root or perhaps the bottom of the trunk of a young sapling and you realize you’re covered in bush, but if you let go you might plummet a hundred feet. Who knows?

10:17 PM

I find it amusing, and this hasn’t happened recently, but rather just popped into my head, that when the simple minded hear something that sounds vaguely interesting coming from, say, a song you’re playing or some line from a book (something you might consider entertaining at best), they call it deep and say things like, “You like all that deep stuff.” At which point I raise an eyebrow and say, “Huh? Deep? Like the ocean?” I just don’t understand some people. Perhaps these peoples’ apparent shallowness is too deep for me to comprehend. Perhaps I am the simpleton. Well, look at my words, my works. Very simple. Nothing astonishing or earth shattering, just thoughts, random and dull.

Sometimes I shake and I noticed that I sometimes speak aloud (a mumble, or my lips move) the words that I am thinking. Sherri noticed a few times but I played dumb. So, perhaps the madness is slowly coming… in bits and pieces my minds are fracturing further. I don’t know.

I was thinking that I ought to try to discover the nature of the universe, perhaps divine some answers by steeping my brain solely in the pursuit of mastering the game of GO. And why not? Fuck it all. I’ll become a professional Go player. I’ll write a Go playing program that’ll beat a 10 dan player, and why the hell not? Get me that million dollar prize! It’s a plan, stan.

Book recommendation by Dmitriy. Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front,” and “Three Friends.” Sounds good to me. Perhaps next time I make it out to the used book store I’ll score it lucky. Last time I didn’t find much of anything. But that’s how it goes when you take a chance at the Half-Price. It’s hit or miss. And then you wander around all day in a dumb stupor, a melancholy haze of misty blue, some green and red thrown in for the hell of it. Everything sucks until you get back to your pad and sit your ass into your well worn reading chair and face the shelves of books and then all seems right with the world.