not tonight
Who isn't sleeping?
That's right! I'm not sleeping! Alas, there is absolutely no good reason for this. I gave it a pretty good shot, I think-- I did try to, you know, crank my brain down to a moderate simmer--- but after almost three hours of lying in bed and wishing I were about to fall asleep while not coming anywhere close to that state, I decided I might as well get up, get dressed, put my contacts in, and entertain myself a little as I begin my slide into further sleep debt. I will read quietly and use the internet quietly, I think, and commit to an all-nighter. Although drugged unconsciousness is qualitatively different (and less healthy) than normal sleep-- it fucks with your natural cycle of brain waves by shoving you almost directly into the deepest levels of sleep and holding you there till it wears off-- I'll consider that as an option for tomorrow night. I've been having a little bit of trouble falling asleep ever since I got back to Pennsylvania; maybe I acclimated to my dorm mattress too well or something. My bed feels weird. I had to put the bedside clock in the bathroom because its ticking was so distracting. I still haven't unpacked my digital alarm clock, and no one has yet asked why the other one is sitting by the sink.
I have a giant stack of magazines by my bed, because for some reason I feel more like reading magazines than reading books right now. Or, I mean, I can process them more easily-- something along those lines. I love novels, and I love long, reasonably scholarly nonfiction works, but they require a type of mental stamina that I don't always have.
One thing I've been realizing is that notable eccentrics are sort of my personal, private folk heroes and heroines, even if they don't do anything particularly notable besides being eccentrics, and even (maybe especially) if their stories are actually a bit tragic. I was going to write more about this, and about how I really identify with and respect people like Henry Darger but worry that my interest will be interpreted as a sort of otherizing freakshow rubbernecking or that other people really are only interested in his life and work in an otherizing freakshow rubbernecky kind of way, but actually I'll probably just spam my tumblr with an assortment of things. Variety mix. I don't think my mental stamina is up to writing essay-length livejournal posts at the moment, either. There are all these birds talking outside my window, and one is an interrupting crow. Seriously. The conversation, to me, sounds like this: tweety-twittery-tweet-tweet-twrrip? chirpachirpachirpa CRRRAW! CRAAAW! irppitychirpachirrrrup, twirrr-tweee CRAAAW! tweet. Crows are aggressively hoarse and unmelodious, uncute birds. I love them for it.