I write from Albuquerque with tired eyes

The other night I was reading this book. It wasn’t anything special. I can’t even tell you who wrote it. It was a book inside a book is what it was. Maybe you’ve read one like it. There’s a major plot, a major character, and then there are subplots, or other characters. But the main character is telling a story. I guess it’s what you would call post modern. It’s not a story about this character but a story about the character telling another story. Like I said it’s not anything special. There are books like it nowadays. And, like I said, I can’t even remember the name of the author. Alessan Something, or Something Alessan…don’t know. Not important. What happened, though, after I turned off my reading light, when my eyes were too heavy to grasp the meaning of the next paragraph, I began saying sentences in my head. My mind continued reading after the book was closed. After the light was out, after my eyes were closed, sentences formed from god-knows where. The novel commenced. The paragraph next started to make sense. I was back in the book, or writing my own.

I was startled by this so much that I woke up from the sleep I was trying to seek. I was tired before I started reading but started reading because I wasn’t tired enough to fall asleep on my own. I’m awake after my mind began to work on its own, creating literature without me in front of a keyboard. I was being flooded with so much inspiration, so close to sleep, but at the same point, I thought, if I woke up and turned on the reading light it would wash away all I had thought of. That thought opened my eyes. Simultaneously, my computer, my Dell Inspiron 2500 started to hum. Did I forget to turn it off, and now, after an hour so of idle time was it turning itself into sleep mode-- hibernation? I didn’t know. I waited awake in the dark listening.

There’s a tiny fan in the Dell Inspiron 2500. It spins, oh does it spin. Little green lights blink as the computer thinks. I’m trying to think about the sentences, the paragraph, the part of the story that I thought up after I turned off the light, after I put the book down. What happened happened just then, but I can’t recall what I was just thinking about, what my mind was thinking about on its own, without me in front of my keyboard, as mentioned, to type it down.

And now, now my laptop’s open (Keyboard right there!), my Dell Inspiron 2500 is up to something, but what? What is different than what I wanted to happen. I want to connect my computer to my conscious, my subconscious. I want those thoughts that I just lost recorded, on a word document saved so to be on the screen when I wake up. I want the Dell Inspiron 2500 to go into my sleep mode as I go into sleep mode, and instead of our minds being both on idle, I want vindication that these intense thoughts that I have while not fully awake mean something. I want us to sleep together. For a story, a memory, I want my dream to be there when I wake up. There for me to shape, make poetic.

Before going to sleep for the night the Dell Inspiron 2500 makes quite a racket. The fan, mentioned already, hums. The laptop LCD screen lights up to say to who’s not looking hibernation is occurring. That it’s about to go black. And that’s it. Out cold. Silence. And sleep. But not for me. I’m awake wondering if the next time I sit in front of the Inspiron 2500 there will be inspiration instead of mind chasing thoughts that are hidden in the crevasses of my cranium, memory me lifting and digging, searching for anything that seems.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

what you need is an apple.