I can't sleep…
We lived in our bodies as in a constant state of emergency. We wore them out trying to either satisfy or exhaust them. We never succeeded in losing ourselves in sleep or pleasure. We were vigilant and wakeful. We always knew what time it was. We were forever trying to fill or close some gap.
— Rachel Cusk, Parade: A Novel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 18, 2024)
I’ve noticed that people love to hurry. Meals are always quick, coffees are never savoured, glances are fleeting, conversations brief and it feels like this is becoming normal, that people only expect surface level and they only strive for surface level in all aspects of life. Mediocre coffee. Luke-warm love. Convenience. Because life is scary and when you sit with it long enough, and really listen to the silence, you notice what you’re missing, and some of what we miss, we know we will never be able to find again.
— Seyda Noir (seydanoirwords @ Instagram, April 28, 2022) (via balancedhuman)
Photo: Pixaby
383 consecutive days. Like in a Row. Morning Walk to Cove Island Park. You’ll say, impossible. I’m telling you, you don’t understand the Wiring. Only 1 day during the streak that put it in jeopardy, and that’s a story for another day.
Back to this morning’s walk. Eric’s on My Mind.
We set up a makeshift office for him in the attic. A white IKEA desk. A desk chair from Staples. A floor mat under the chair from Amazon. A small single bed against the wall. And there he hibernates.
Late night, he shifts in the chair, the floorboards creak, his office directly above the Master bedroom. His chair directly on top of me, sleeping. He’ll be editing his photos, the same photos for hours. Days. The penguin from South Africa, that one up top, took weeks. Deliberate. Meticulous. Punctilious. Like a Professional.
He crawls into bed at ~3 a.m. About the time when his Dad, me, stirs, getting ready for his Daybreak walk. Continue reading “Walking. With #1 Son.”
“I am always on the edge of what I am doing. I do everything badly, sloppily, to get it over with so that I can get on to the next thing that I will do badly and sloppily so that I can then do nothing – which I do anxiously, distractedly, wondering all the time if there isn’t something else I should be getting on with. … When I’m working, I’m wishing I was doing nothing and when I’m doing nothing I’m wondering if I should be working. I hurry through what I’ve got to do and then, when I’ve got nothing to do, I keep glancing at the clock, wishing it was time to go out. Then, when I’m out, I’m wondering how long it will be before I’m back home.”
— Geoff Dyer, Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling with D. H. Lawrence
Inspired by: I picked up the book after reading “Vivian Gornick: ‘I Couldn’t Finish Michelle Obama’s Becoming‘: (The Guardian, March 26, 2021): “The last book that made me laugh Out of Sheer Rage by Geoff Dyer is a brilliant book. For me, the best thing he ever wrote. A little bit of genius, it made me laugh, and laugh, and laugh.”
