Insomnia night ... I have no idea exactly why it is.
Perhaps it is the unseasonal warm wind, the failure to wriggle my toes enough,
the thought of being alone and how much longer I can bear it,
or my visions of recent hatched, matched and dispatched.
Maybe it is the building plans spinning in my head,
wondering how The Girl is going,
the aeroplane I'm getting on, to deliver a paper to a roomful of historians
(can you imagine a tougher crowd?)
or that this week my whole world shifted a bit
when a publisher said they'd take a punt on my book.
Perhaps it is just Bob's house. He was an insomniac.
About an hour ago, the trucks began coming in from Perth. When their gears begin shifting down to turn into the freight depot, I know it's going to be a while - of forklifts and reversing beeps and something that sounds like gas cylinders being thrown around inside a concrete shed. Bob told me once about a sleepless night. The trucks arrived and the forklifts began. He wandered down the hill in his dressing gown and dirty glasses and I'll bet his hair was doing that mad scientist thing. He asked them to keep the noise down as he was having trouble sleeping.
They stopped and stared at him. Those guys had been driving for five hours and probably had to do the return trip after they unloaded. They told him to fuck off.
A few years ago, instead of a screen and a qwerty, I would have curled up with my pen and my journal
as was my wont,
scrawled pages of black angst, then shut the covers ...
and now I'm blogging my insomnia.
Heh heh, sorry guys. Service will be resumed soon.
There's another truck. Now where is my tartan dressing gown and dirty glasses?
That's excitement insomnia.
ReplyDeleteGood news re publishing, don't sign anything you don't want.
I dunno about excitement but it is quite novel for me. Got a lot of stuff nutted out, worked out how to build a shed out of a boat, wrote a thing or two ...
ReplyDeleteYes Merc, good news!
Congratulations re book!!!
ReplyDeleteIs it the historical fiction or something else?
I assume the former.
The delivery of your paper will be a cakewalk, I'm sure. If at all in doubt, just ask where the UTAS archaeology department is. (They don't have one). An indigenous run archaeology department would be great, I think.
End of semester here swallowed me a little...free to write again now...
Oh ...and 8724 ...for July 8.
Have you heard about MONA?
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ReplyDeleteHi Sontag, yes end of semester does that. I'm just coming up for air.
ReplyDeleteThe book is not the historicofiction I've been working on but the Old Salt Stories! Remember them?
Thanks for that.
Great story that. I'm mid way though the Turning, on your recommendation some months ago. Read, 'Long, Clear View' this morning.
ReplyDeleteWow.
I looked around for The Turning on my bookshelf to remember 'long, clear view' and it is gone ... just have to sort out who I've lent it to now.
ReplyDelete'Boner McPharlin's Moll' - that is my favourite story.
It's the one where he's Vic and his dad's a cop and he's new in school and the school goes on fire and there's a death at the social and he's fingering the firing bolt on the .22 cos his dad's been transferred out of town and the dog's been poisoned and his mum's at her wits end. It's great. Not at Boner McPharlin's yet. Find that book, get it back.
ReplyDeleteHey I missed this one ST. I have nights like that occasionally too. Lots going on in your life and I hate to tell you but about this age sleep patterns do change sometimes. Mine certainly did after being a comatose heavy dreaming sort of sleeper prior to that. Oh, I didn't sleep too well before delivering my one and only paper either - but I loved doing it and I reckon you will too.
ReplyDeleteDon't underestimate the impact of your environment, energetic patterns created by noise and movement are real and disturbing. You are living in a vortex there - I am sure the dowsers would find plenty of geo-energy grids swirling around you.
Thanks Michelle, yes when I say 'maybe it's Bob's house' it is not his ghost I am speaking of but the place itself. You are right to describe it as a vortex. Waugal and road train dreaming place.and that is before the lay of the land. Sometimes I understand really clearly the struggles he had with insomnia and depressiion in the 20 years he lived in this house. But there is also a kind of magic wildness where possums and bandicoots and chickens all coexist quite happily and I can see the sea from my window. An odd spot; prone to creativity, madness and activism and sometimes even peace (about 4am).
ReplyDeleteMy thesis is really about this, how these 'energy' systems and archetypes in the landscape affect the human psyche. Of course urban landscapes are even more complex because of the many layers if activity.
ReplyDeleteThat's a kind of informal study of mine.
ReplyDeleteInteresting Geoff McCoys take on energy inside the wave.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUqIXK3aMEs
yep I ride a Nugget.
A soon-to-be-published author. Well done Sarah.
ReplyDeleteWhen did our paths last cross? It must be close to two years. You told me then you were writing a blog but when I looked I never found it. I guess I assumed that, like so many, you found it a drain on your time and stopped blogging.
So I found it tonight, whilst looking for something else: of course!
Have read the bits on Bob. He was a perceptive fellow. When I told him I had enrolled at UWA (what seems like an age ago), he told me I would find it a breeze but I would be unlikely to finish because I would not accept the current system and would refuse to "play the game", Oh well! Thinking of resuming next year.
Geoff S.
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