Awake in an alien room, alien town, alien hour. Alienated. Not alone, but to jostle Jane to jaw with, I’m not that cruel. Insomnia is a condition, not a symptom. My book supplicates but no, sorry, I don’t feel like reading. I’m disinclined even to surf the web, my sulk is that severe. I just want to sleep – is that too much to ask? Sleep taunts like Tantalus’ peach (unless it was a plum). Did Thoreau have nights like this in his lonely cabin or Montaigne in his tower? They must have, but did they write about it? If they had, who’d want to read it? A screed against the commonest of complaints – really! In our plugged-in age, I might permit myself an online game, but no, that way addiction lies. Raptor from Turkey does not have my best interests at heart.
Pascal said all man’s problems stem from our inability to sit still in a room alone. I overwork that quote, but how can I help it, it’s so apt. Puppy Henry is distant, sleeping soundly, who can doubt. Does he miss me? Not likely. He lives in the here and now, neither yesterday nor tomorrow. If I reappear, he’ll be glad – I’m familiar, after all, as a well-gnawed slipper – but if I don’t, hey-ho, everything vanishes, no use moping.
I haven’t the foggiest what to do with myself only I can’t do nothing and nothing tempts, not even the munificent (and extravagant) minibar. “Appetite is the best condiment,” observed Brillat-Savarin, the famous chef, but my only appetite now is for sleep, which mocks me. I don’t even want to think. If dawn were nearer, I’d grit out this interval, but morning is as distant as the election. I must do something or die. (Do or die, hmmm, new sense for an old phrase.) What if I typed. Anything. Whatever my fingertips produced. If blather’s all I could manage, so be it. A sentence to commute my sentence. “Right yourself by writing yourself” – that threadbare bromide.
How often have words rescued me from me! Language demands direction and will not take eh for an answer. Start writing and suddenly I’m on stage before a waiting audience. I can’t just stand there mute. One word leads to the next. And before I know it, I’ve forgotten my listeners in my pursuit of sense.
When Jane and I were billing and cooing twenty (yes, twenty) years ago, we were talking and talking one sunny Sunday morning, as lovers will. (Love, someone said, is the garrulous passion.) The unnoticed clock ticked past lunch, and wow, were we ever hungry. Jane’s helper was on holiday and Jane does not cook. “There must be something in the frig,” she speculated, “maybe baloney and mustard for a sandwich.” I might eat a baloney and mustard sandwich if starvation were my alternative – or I might try cannibalism. While no cook, my stint as an inadvertent bachelor had taught me the rudiments of food preparation. (“Appetite is the best cuisinier,” Brillat-Savarin might have said.) Brief rummaging in Jane’s refrigerator uncovered eggs, butter, and plastic-sheathed cheese slices. Any port in a storm.
My omelet wasn’t half bad, gotta say, accompanied by a cool white wine. Hit the spot – a spot close to Jane’s heart. If cooking enhanced my attractiveness to my ladylove, fetch me a toque! Same goes for writing. If improvising with words can make me friends and rescue me from the mundane, have at it! Start talking and with luck I might say something. And if not, no worries, I will soon be yawning.