Sunday 23 September 2012

Writing myself to sleep



The desire to write coupled with the desire to sleep leads to a decided change in my handwriting. Normally, I can barely control my pen – struggling to keep up with the rapids pouring from my mind. I find myself dropping letters, writing words in the wrong order and merging a series of letters into one curious symbol. It’s not dyslexia – just a case of the physical process letting down the mental process. But now, I look at my handwriting in the paragraph I’ve just written and think “My! How legible.”
And how lacking in passion and enthusiasm.
But it’s fine.

I’m just terribly, terribly tired and yearn to peel off my clothes and discard them in a pile on my bedroom floor before sliding into bed.

This is how I know I’m tired – the idea of clothes on the floor is abhorrent to me, but right now, the prospect of hanging them on the back of my chair, or worse, transferring some to the laundry basket, seems as challenging as climbing Everest.

Anyway, I can’t sleep. I’m not even at home. It’s 3.45pm in the afternoon and I’m sat writing in a cafĂ© because I’m killing time before meeting my friend at the National Gallery. And we have to go today because the show is closing soon, and it’s the only time we’re both free, and two of my friends specifically recommended it, and I’m already starting to feel crushed by the weight of guilt bearing down on my shoulders, and I don’t know why I feel guilty, because I’m still going, right? I haven’t cancelled, but now I’m starting to feel bad, like somehow I don’t value it enough, or won’t appreciate it enough, or that the presence of my semi-somnambulant self in the gallery is somehow going to poison the whole show.

Oh that’s it. I just can’t bear to think about it anymore, I’m going and that’s that but I really am going to spoil it for myself because I’m already trying to calculate in my head how long I think it will take me to get around the exhibition, which is a bad thing to think, but I’m just so desperate to crawl into bed. On the plus side, an earlier email from my friend has suggested that he too is in need of an early night so perhaps he will be amenable to me gently nudging him towards the bus after the exhibition, towards our own separate beds.