Vignette.

I wake up slightly to the sound of the river passing over my head, water that would cause flooding and gridlock and agony for the city while I slept. My body is wrapped in sheets and quilts, and my eyes flick between a grey cloudy light and black cloudy dark, and my mind drowns in the sound of rain, and my soul is disgorged like an overbloated corpse from the sea of dreams. A sudden splash of impetus twists my body like a rag, and my arm falls onto the empty side of the bed, resting on something other than mattress. And for a less than a moment I feel a warm body, peaceful, her oblivion to the tempest outside offering me a sweet, second-hand solace, a warmth to fold myself into. Soon enough, though, the form defines itself: cold, small, rigid. It was my dictionary, left at my side during a recent bout of insomniac solving.

Thank you, Life, for interrupting my dreams with a taunting metaphor. No, really, it made my day.

My life isn't empty. But it's not as full as it could be. And as long as there's an empty space next to me, it'll be filled by whatever's handy, usually from my bookcase. A book has many things to offer me, of course, but what have I to offer it?

Tension

I just emended my previous entry slightly to keep it all in the same tense. I have a difficult time with it, especially when writing something that evokes my own emotions or sensations. I enter into the story I'm telling and narrate as it is recreated. I think it's an influence of theatre. When someone speaks in the past tense, the listener accepts a layer of distance. In the present tense, there is a demand on the listener to accept it as real-time reality as it happens. The messenger comes on stage and tells of how, just now, he saw Oedipus discover Jocasta. The audience sees the messenger's horror and sympathizes with it. But have that same messenger look offstage and tell the same story as it happens, and the audience is no longer the object of the messengers tale, but through him, they are participants in the scene themselves.

When I write, I want someone to be able to read it as an actor reads, becoming the character or the world actively. Or me.

Highlights.

Wow.

I just read through my entire journal. It was . . . interesting.

Along the way, I marked the ones I felt were worth remembering for inclusion on my Memories page. There are now 114 entries. I didn't realize I'd marked that many.

Shopping update.

Gifts purchased for my sister and for one set of grandparents. Hooray for the Borders within walking distance.