The Paperwork

Sleeping Sickness

I'd go get some coffee, but I don't have the energy



Every six weeks or so -- I'm not exactly sure as I haven't been marking this down like a good little scientist wannabe should -- I get what I call the sleeping sickness. I just feel tired all the time. Yesterday, after lunch, I came home and decided it was too hot to stay home, I would go out and see a movie instead. But first I was just going to lie down for a couple of minutes.

When I woke up, a couple of hours had passed and I was groggy and still sleepy. Instead of allowing myself to go back to sleep though, I got up and went food shopping. This completely tuckered me out. I came home, plopped on the couch, and lay there watching TV until about midnight, when I went to bed.

I slept like the dead for 10 hours...and since waking up all I've been doing is yawning and thinking about going back to bed. And complaining. Darin and I have been playing Gabriel Knight 2, which, because it's a Sierra game for Mac, keeps crashing. While Darin fights the forces of darkness and Mac-programming-ignorance, I lie down on the futon bed we have upstairs, near the Mac. Darin gets annoyed at me for getting up, walking over to the futon, and plopping down. "Just go back to bed!" he tells me. I like playing the game (when it's working); I simply want to be able to play from a nice comfy bed.

I know this leaden feeling, the sleepiness, the incessant need to get just a few more minutes sleep (no matter how much I've already have) will pass in a few days. Until then, though, I feel like a zombie. (No cracks about how I'm writing like one.)


I've been reading an interesting book called The Courage To Write, by Ralph Keyes. I saw a quote from it in Willa's Journal, and I broke my rule of "No More Writing Books" for this one. I like how the author talks about the fears that go along with putting your writing out there, that someone you know and love will read what you write and what you write will hurt them, the baser motives we have for writing. How writers can use writing to get back at people.

I've thought about using this or other forums to stick it to the people who have hurt me...or who I've allowed to hurt me. I could leave a big ol' billboard here or in a movie script or somewhere about what a horrible person she or he is.

Writers can be such mean-spirited bastards. Anything is fair game for them. We experience all these horrible emotions, often for the express purpose of being able to write about them.

I've wondered how I can be so callous about the crash of Flight 800. I know it's horrible, I know that lots of people died -- but I honestly don't care. Or I care only on the level of, "I'm glad it didn't happen to me or anyone I know." Which is more taking glee that me and mine survived rather than sympathy for those who perished. I'm glad that somebody is investigating it, that someone is on the case -- I don't want minute-to-minute updates though.

The constant dwelling on the details of the crash makes me question what the news media's motive is. Is it simply the lure of the grotesque? I could have done without the little snippet that one reason the authorities have to cordon off the crash area and keep lookie-loos away is that onlookers have a tendency to take memorabilia of the event home with them...including human remains. "Hey Priscilla, look what I found! Fire up the barbecue." I wonder what goes on through people's minds sometimes.

If you'd like a wrenching and memorable look at what the last few seconds might have been like, read "Two Minutes Forty Five Seconds" by Dan Simmons (in the book Prayers to Broken Stones). Fills me with horror to read it. The kind of horror I haven't felt through all the news coverage.

Hey...it's the 17th or 18th anniversary of the moonwalk today. Cool.


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Copyright ©1996 Diane Patterson