The Deadly Power of Gibberish

It was dark in the room when my eyes slid open. That was no surprise?it was always dark out when I got up. The alarm hadn't gone off yet, but I felt good and refreshed. I'd slept hard and no longer remembered what nightmares may have plagued me. I had a cat curled up on either side, pinning me under the blanket.

I lay there a while, comfortable and warm, waiting for the alarm, figuring out what needed to be done that day. I sniffed. My sinuses seemed clear. That was good.

After lying there a while with no alarm, I finally rolled over, grabbed the clock and pulled it as close as I could to my eyes. Sometimes the cats, see, they change the time on me. I peered hard, scanning slowly across the numbers to make sure I got them all.

"Well, fuck me," I said aloud after a third scan (just to make sure). It was six minutes after midnight. It suddenly dawned on me that the cough medicine I'd gulped three hours earlier?the crap that was supposed to help me sleep all night?had pulled one of those double backflip super-duper whammy twists they can sometimes pull. I knew immediately that I would probably be up for the rest of the night. That's the way these things work. Then, as if on cue, my sinuses began to fill. I had no tissues in the apartment, and had run out of toilet paper a few hours earlier, using the last, wrinkled swatch to blow my nose one last time before crawling into bed.

This was very bad.

I rolled out of bed and felt my way into the kitchen where, despite everything, and knowing full well that it wouldn't help a goddamn thing (especially the sinuses), I had a smoke. Then I went back to bed, snaking my way between the two unmoving cats.

The brain does funny and evil things on nights like this. Maybe yours doesn't, but mine does. Words begin to pop up, repeating themselves until all meaning is lost. Half-phrases and names and incomplete ideas spin in circles, with no means provided to finish them, no way to jump in there, interrupt, take control and stop them. The more they spin, the more stressful and painful it all becomes, and the more impossible it becomes to even consider sleep again.

Here's a random sampling of some of the words and phrases I had to contend with that night.

Martin Amis' first novel

Akira Ifukube

People who go to orchid shows are different from you and me.

Don't know what it is, don't know what it is, don't know what it is...

Everyone's a liar

"Well, I'm Chinese... Yeah, that's super..."

Watching too much film noir. Making me paranoid. Spent an hour convinced?

Smell of mothballs is what

Pulse of orange light

Oozing Cyst Blues

Ice shelf breaking up obviously because?

Everything eventually comes true

The Germans like?

Crap crap crap crap

Bad set-ups. Should've seen it coming

Half pack of smokes

Need toilet paper

Listen to tape

Forty of them. Over forty

Mosura ya, Mosura...

Laying them out that way makes it all look much too neat. They overlapped, bounced around my head like the echoes of a dozen different voices all talking at once. None of them, fortunately, were suggesting that I start setting any fires.

It went on and on like that, as I flipped from side to side, trying to ignore the fact that at any given time either one nostril or the other was completely clogged, listening to the rain pound the streets outside and the wind rattle the windows. There were more cars that night than I would've figured. They'd disappear after a while. By 3, I knew, the streets would be completely empty and silent again. Except for the rain. I'm always curious about those few people who are driving around the neighborhood at 3 in the morning. I'm much less curious about the pedestrians.

Goddamn pedestrians...bicyclists...kids....

On the verge of screaming, I flipped over one more time and grabbed the tape player. I'd been listening to some awful contemporary courtroom thriller, which had done a pretty damn good job these past few weeks of dropping me right off to sleep. It'd worked earlier in the evening, so maybe it would again now, even though it would be fighting against some sort of pharmaceutical riptide.

I rewound the tape to the last scene I remembered, and hit the play button.

It's always worked before... It's always...

The plot rolled along its unmistakable, utterly predictable path until the tape ran out. I was still staring straight up. Shit shit shit shit shit.

I flipped the tape over and set it to playing again. These things usually put me under in 15 minutes or less. This time, after this new side had run out, it had been nearly an hour and a half, and I wasn't any closer to anything except doom.

Doom, doom, doom...doomed again...doomed again, naturally... In a little while from now, if I'm not feelin' any less sour...

I didn't bother to put in the next tape. I couldn't take much more of that right now. Couldn't take much more of anything. If it's not clear by now, I don't deal well without sleep. Lots and lots of it. I sat up, swung my legs around and planted them on the tile floor. I put my elbows on my knees, and there I sat.

It had been a slow, rolling collection of things these past two weeks. Events, situations, some bad, some good. But even the good ones?and the good ones had been very good?had added to the quiet strain. If anything, the good things were worse than the bad ones that way. The bad things had been minor. Little more than annoyances. With the bad things, all I had to do, really, was wait them out. I knew they'd pass, and they did. With the good ones, however, something was expected of me. I had to do something. I'm no good at doing things. I'm much better at waiting things out. That's one of the main reasons, I think, I ended up with a cold. I never get colds. Or at least I hadn't before this year.

I put my head back on the pillow and let the thoughts spin around for a while longer.

Stille dage I Clichy... In 1940, a then desperate and penniless...desperate...

I dozed on and off for the next hour or two. Mostly what I did was stare and sniff. Then the radio came on.