Insomnamania
December 17, 2008 § Leave a comment
Well, I like my new habit of writing fast and not re-reading, except that I make so many typos. Sorry. My typing gets worse every year. I think my mother has cast a spell to keep her young; the devil neglected to tell her he was taking the juice from me. But I’m used to falling apart. I might even be getting used to terror, although so far I’ve only tested that thesis at home. I’m dreading Christmas because my brother will want to talk seriously and often about my mother’s finances and mine are so much worse it makes me feel like I’m on a planet with double earth gravity and I’ve eaten something funny and am getting hives. (This just from the phone calls.) But I don’t want to make him worry about me too. Not yet. He keeps talking about how we’ll end up living in our mother’s house and I’m beginning to think he half means it. When I was 11 and first lived in New York I was so lonely, I longed for my siblings’ company but their doors were closed, and I had to barge in and Johnny got locks and now this idea of us living together in the maternal home is awakening an idea–sort of like an Anne Tyler novel–of aging oddballs riding out the storm, one foot in the womb, one foot in the grave. Nice image, isn’t it? It’s hard to keep your balance in that situation, the womb all slippery and the grave 6 feet under.
Philip told me tonight his boss has told him they’re firing his # 2 person ( a man he recruited, respects, likes, who has worked very hard ) at the end of January and the fellow and his wife are spending big bucks trying to get her pregnant. Knowing the ax is falling on this guy, unable to stop it, unable to give warning. Philip kept saying, “I want to shoot myself.” He has other reasons for that sentiment, but still. I had to stroke his warm hand that always reminds me of a gingerbread man puffed up from the oven.
Why the fuck can’t I go to bed earlier so I will have more sunlight? And why, now that I’m asking unanswerable questions, do I always feel, returning home, that there will be an animal waiting for me when I haven’t had a pet in 25 years?
Mostly in the Afternoon 
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