I am an insomniac

Dear Stephenie Meyer,

I hate you. I loath you. You insult the whole field of literature merely by existing.

I hate you because I am an insomniac. My insomnia is in no way related to you, but our only connection (thus my resulting hatred for you) resulted from my inability to go to sleep. Therefore it is your fault I am awake.

I hate you because my sweet, thoughtful grandmother purchased ALL of your books, and for Christmas gave them to me.

I hate you because I have spent nearly seven consecutive hours reading said books, and have consequentially missed two meals and an important phone call.

I hate you because reading your books has left me with the sensation of eating a whole pie, in one sitting, by myself. And resulting from this I have an insuperable urge to vomit. And shower.

I hate you because you spell your name with an "e" instead of an "a".

I hate you because you have produced four of the most poorly written, anti-feminist, and abusive relationship enabling books of the century, possibly of all time.

And you win the award for most unnecessary and excessive use of adjectives of all time (page 71, paper back edition). And on several accounts, you failed to identify the pronoun for about 3 1/2 pages.

I hate you because I could eat alphabet soup and shit out a better book than the ones you have produced.

For all of these reasons I hate you, but the biggest reason I harbor such unresolvable ill-will towards you, Stephenie Meyer, is because your literary vomit has awarded you roughly millions of dollars, and for all my anti-materialistic sentiment, I am really fucking broke.

... the story of my life ladies and gentlemen

My penny pinching Jew of a mother explains to me in increasingly loud and irritated tones that by not raising the thermostat above 67 degrees we are saving incalculable amounts of money.

This is of little relief to my freezing and currently feeling-less phalanges.
As a direct result of this I sulk to the basement, dig around in a sawdust covered, black mould filled crawlspace and dig up an electric area heater.

I crank it to high and go to sleep.
In an ironic twist of events, I wake up covered in about four quarts of my own sweat and the thermostat now tells me that it is eighty degrees in my room.

I'm going to write the makers of this area heater a strongly worded letter of gratitude and praise for engineering such a superb piece of machinery.

It is Fucking Cold

You're playing "Nostalgia" in a cafe in a dodge part of town. It's the coldest it's been all winter, and that fact seems to amplify how dark it is tonight. The cafe is filled with the usual: an old, greying man, reliving his own jazz memories, several middle aged women, commending themselves on being cultured and musically intellectual (a direct result of listening to live jazz), and elderly man escaping the frigid night and possibly a vacant lonely house; a reminder of the family that left him. And me. Your Girlfriend (I feel like that should be capitalized). Devotedly attending another musical event at which the actual level of your musical prowess will escape me. All I'm aware of is that the music you make is beautiful, and inspires me. And that I love you (seemingly unconditionally).
That, and the look on your face when you're playing is the same one you have when we make love. It's a totally new and unexplored level of jealousy when your envy is directed at a drum set.
Regardless, this cafe, surrounded by an otherwise dark and unconcerned world lit only by headlights bouncing off ice, is my bright and warm fixed point in the universe; a warm place of light pulsating with the sound of jazz, and kept in tempo by the steady rhythm of the drummer whom I love.

Did perpetual happiness in the Garden of Eden maybe get so boring that eating the apple was justified?

I feel like humans are not totally different than bears in the winter. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that we are not different than squirrels, or some other small, hibernating rodent. Perhaps the most honest thing to say would be I am not very different from a hibernating rodent. In the summer and spring I am a social animal, extroverted if I may. My internal balance of happiness is totally dependent on the frequency and quality of interpersonal contact. Despite this totally universal and basic need for social interaction, come late fall/wintertime, I get upset and positively irate if I have to see more than two different people a day and am also expected to act cordially among them.

Instead during these colder seasons, I find myself turning the proverbial eye inward and am much happier to observe and reflect rather than participate and experience. And I also notice that I have no middle ground. I'm either 100% engaged in my social relationships or I'm a recluse.

To this observation I also have a theory: F. Scott Fitzgerald (my personal hero and an author to whose level I aspire) said that a writer is not a person who writes of many people, but many people whose thoughts and reactions are described through the life and reactions of one person. I am immediately drawn to and repulsed by this statement (perhaps further proving his point?). It appeals to me because who wouldn't want a personality so multi-faceted? It vexes me because the one thing I really pride myself on is being able to maintain a level of artistic intelligence while maintaining a certain soundness of mind.

But inevitably I must concede. I feel as though I have hundreds of contradicting personalities, each contending strongly for spotlight via my pen. That being said, let me be clear. I am not, nor have I ever shown any clinically definable characteristics of schizophrenia. Or any form of mental disorder. With the possible exception of ADD. But let's be honest. That's obviously a bureaucratic term to be given to and inevitably treated in people who in reality are just living in a world that they are so devastatingly bored and suppressed by.

Springtime

And our hearts were like kites that we tied to our heels
As we rode on our bikes down those cobbles and wheels
Pushed us further as our hearts flew overhead
And danced like those stars when we laid in your bed
And walking at night we both had no demands
And the only noise heard was our whispering hands
And I don’t recall breathing as our bodies got close
Our sighs harmonized, our souls were exposed

Untitled

I can liken 95% of my romantic relationships to reading a book. Reading a book is all consumption, pleasure. You aren’t particularly concerned with the content of what you’re reading, but rather, with the emotions that it is evoking. You open a book because the title is interesting, intriguing. And as you skim the first few chapters, not predominantly concerned with the words you see if it holds enticing language or thought, but more so if you can find something that really grabs you. Something small, a quirk about the author’s writing that you find endearing. And once it grabs you, you no longer care about what specifically you’re reading, your chief concern is completion. The conclusion of the book is now a goal to achieve, and when finished the pleasure is overwhelming. What a sense of accomplishment, of growth at the completion of a novel. But however overwhelming the triumph, there is also a proportionate sense of dissatisfaction. There should be more. It should continue. It should have left your belly feeling like you’ve eaten a prime steak, not a microwavable mac ‘n cheese bowel. You shared a deep personal connection with that book at one point in time, but now it’s over. And the feeling of loss and bittersweet finale is replaced with a proverbial sigh of relief. Of course you mourn the end of a wonderful literary jeuissance but let us be frank; just because you closed the book doesn’t mean your life will be heading to a screeching halt.
It’s because of the ease, the accessibility to books. They’re definitive, quantifiable. I want to read a book that doesn’t leave me feeling like that. I want the prime steak. How do you put words to an experience that is all sensation? The book I want to read will be intimidating, with a heavy, hard-covered casing that is elegantly bound over pages and pages of handwritten script in a language I don’t know how to read. You’re not supposed to read them. You fall into the pages and let the sensations pull you through the book. It’s like needing glasses your whole life only not knowing it. Then suddenly having them, wearing them, and seeing the world, experiencing sensations in a whole new clarity.