Like zero sleep last night.
…Started off with a ridiculous cat in heat who decided to yowl right outside my bedroom window. I kept telling her to shut the hell up and have some dignity, but she refused to listen to me. Around two or so she must have stopped, cuz the next time I opened my eyes to look at the clock, it was five. This time, it was Mrs. Johnson’s fault. She want her pill-cocktail, so I had to get up, shove some food down m’throat and toss back the meds, then go back to bed clutching my guts and moaning.
…I put on Netflix to keep me company. Ancient Egypt. Mostly stuff on King Tut.
…I’m a little obsessed with mummies and tombs.
…And also serial killers and the Holocaust.
…If my theory is correct, (that whatever you are obsessed with in life, is because you have some sort of formal connection to it in the past…not necessarily in a “past life” per se, but possibly, and at the very least you were somehow present in a spirit or energy form around a person who was having that experience at the time…kinda like a cling-on to a host), then I’ve witnessed me some SERIOUSLY disturbing shit in my time. And yet where I can watch endless documentaries on it without residual affect (besides weeping), I CANNOT watch any of those things in a Hollywood film with viscera and guts just flying all over the place.
I don’t know why.
The REAL things are so much more disturbing. You’d think THOSE would be the ones to haunt me. But no.
…I got this idea for a book a couple years ago, based on the Jack the Ripper case and spent the better part of NINE MONTHS with my nose in German Victorian dissecting books, and pouring over the snapshots of every attributed victim’s remains. It was completely disgusting (and necessary…and gory…and disturbing as hell), yet it needed to be done in order to get the thing done correctly. I’m talking some TRULY gorrific stuff, here. And yet, I can’t even watch Hospital dramas or detective junk on T.V. without nightmares.
…I went through most of my childhood COMPLETELY surrounded in Holocaust literature and history books, because the empathy (yes, “empathy,” not “sympathy”) for these people was totally unexplainable.
…The Romanov family massacre, and possible survival of one of the children, completely fascinates me.
…The tombs of the ancient Pharaohs, are crazy interesting, and I will watch anything regarding Egyptology, at any time.
…The era of WWII in general, (from it’s music to social customs) feels like a natural default that I could easily slip right into, were I to magically teleport into it one day.
…England is clearly my main base “home”…it just calls to the roots of me.
…And I relate to Bronte & Austen era books, character feelings, and frustrations far too much to NOT have (in some way) participated in them, historically.
So, when I can’t sleep…these are strangely, the places I retreat to…either in book form or film…to ease me back to an even keel and drift me off to sleep again.
Weird, I know. But what are yuh gonna do?
…So through five, six, seven o’clock this morning…I soaked up History Channel explorations and tried not to think about how badly my stomach hurt, and how The BFF was gonna be leaving today.
It was a good sidetrack for a while.
Until it wasn’t, anymore.
She and The Fella buzzed the door at nine, with coffees in hand. A last “hurrah,” before they started their week-long road trip enroute to L.A.. First stop: the ocean for the night, then onto Ashland for a couple of plays at the Oregon Shakes…then two days in Vegas with The Fella’s aunt, and next to visit her brother in S.F.. Then: L.A.
…I’ll be pickin’ The Fella up from the airport next Saturday.
Our coffee was had. Ridiculous teasing and riffing, took place. I gave her a monster hug. And she was on her way.
…I’m really excited for her. And really bummed for me. And the thing I wanna do most right now is just hermit away this sunny day by watching incredibly depressing history lessons of my possible past lives on Netflix, until rehearsal rips me out of my moroseness at four P.M.
That’s all I wanna do right now.
…But in my head, I can hear her say something like, “Fuck that shit! It’s sunny! Get out in that and play!”
I’m negotiating with Mrs. Johnson right now to see if she’s either with me on this, or I need to beat her into submission. Cuz moping is NOT the answer. And I know it.
…SEE how good The BFF has trained me?!
FUCK it’s really gonna suck to be without her.
~D
