Okay, it's 8:27 pm and my brain seems to be saying, "Go lie down." And my stomach responds, "Jolly rum idea, old chap."
Who was I reading yesterday? Was it Leo Babauta again, writing about NaNoWriMo? Yes, it was Leo Babauta again, writing about NaNoWriMo. He said to write *every day*, *in the morning*. That's not a law, he impressed, but a good rule of thumb. The way my eyes are heavy and my mind is mushy, I think it's a pretty good rule of thumb. Somehow, the grogginess of awaking from sleep is preferable to the grogginess of approaching slumber.
A friend of mine recently spoke of how he always has a notebook (paper) with him at all times - even by his bed. Sometimes he awakes in the deep of night and jots down earth-shattering ideas in his notebook. Then he rises in the morning and looks at those crazy scribblings with incredulousness. (But real gems are unearthed in this subliminal way by him as well.)
Bill Bryson told a story of an old-time genius who had this same practice. This genius was exploring the meaning of the universe and all life, but was frustrated at the threshold of a revelation. So, with nothing to be done about it, he went to bed. And awoke in the middle of the night with the answer, a flash of inspiration. He wrote it down and returned to it in the light of the morning. And this is what he had recorded:
"A smell of petroleum pervades throughout."
When I was a kid, I used to have whole conversations with my mom, in the morning, before she left for work and before I had to get up to go to school in the afternoon. She would go into extensive detail about what dishes she had prepared for my lunch and where I could find them - the microwave or the fridge or under the food cover on the dining table. Then I would drop back into unconsciousness. And wake up later, throw a slice of cheese between two crusts of bread, wolf it down and catch the bus to school.
She'd come back in the afternoon and query me about the uneaten vegetables on the table, the eggs in the microwave, the stir-fried beef in the fridge... And at that moment, the whole early-morning conversation would come back to me, clear as a VHS movie.
It was always a cause of consternation to me. At the moment of conversing with her, I'd be certain that I was awake. She would talk to me as one fully aware - not groggy or drifting away was I. Yet, the entire exchange would be erased from my mind until we came home again in the evening; me from school and she from work. Very curious.
I blame aliens.
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