Reasons I Can't Sleep, Matt David

August, 2009

1. I am filled with anxiety about making my flight tomorrow. Many close calls while heading west from Prague, most notably the panic in Paris’s lunatic subway system. There is no room for error tomorrow. Also: Debt.
2. Traveling alone has been exhausting. The same conversations repeating themselves. “Where have you been? How do you like _______ so far? What’s Chicago like?” And if not those conversations, solitude and the voices in my head. I went to a movie in Amsterdam one night just to shut everyone up and be away for awhile.
3. In still moments, my mind keeps returning to the first afternoon on the beach in Nice. I had a croque monsieur at a café by my hostel and bought a pack of Gauloises and a bottle of Kronenbourg 1664 on my way back toward the beach. So very French. Lolita was with me and I met some girls on the beach earlier. I had never been so happy and comfortable with myself. It’s not even something I can locate within myself somewhere, no precise origin for it. The joy came from inside me and spread everywhere. I knew I had a soul. And when I found the perfect stone patch of beach to settle my happiness down on for the remaining sunlight, I reached for my newly purchased beach towel hanging from the strap of my knapsack and found nothing. That’s when I remembered myself and the inner joy left and I had to figure out what to do next.
4. Girls reading in sunglasses when they aren’t absolutely necessary. The salmon-colored linen dress and perfect tan legs that walked just ahead of me to the top of the Duomo. The last postcard I sent her.
5. Having Séan show me Dublin pub by pub was a brilliant idea. A window into the culture, the city, and my mother’s past. True conversation. So refreshing, uplifting and, eventually, drunk.
6. I can dance now. Well, I still can’t really dance, but I will. And do. I can’t believe it. What did it take for me to let go and dance? A pretty girl’s smile and many liters of beer.
7. Davidov’s fist pumping into the air during my final reading in Prague. The great pride of impressing an elder that you have the utmost respect for. College is worth it for that.
8. I’m afraid. Tomorrow night I’ll be home. School is done now and I’ll be living in my city, having a fresh appreciation for the world. But I will still be working a restaurant job, unsure and unwilling to commit to a course of living. This trip has taught me a great many things, but top billing belongs to my love of observing my surroundings. The observation often takes precedence over full participation. So here I am and here I’ll be, still drifting along on my road to the sun. Maybe I’ll be rich in experience, but I can’t afford a return trip to Europe—or jaunt through South America, an Asian journey—with that.

August 2010

1. Murakami’s description of the two characters holding each other: The top of the woman’s head coming just to his chin, her cheek on his chest, her breasts on his stomach, her scent in his nose. It brought me to each embrace, but most powerfully to the last person I have truly held.
2. The last person I’ve truly held. Who will I hold next?
3. I keep holding conversations with someone in my head. I don’t mean that I imagine a Somebody in my head. These are conversations with people I know. Well, I’m saying what I want to say to them. They are probably just saying what I want them to say, though I tell myself I’m predicting an accurate approximation of what they would say. In fact, I should know that even if I were to ever say what I am saying in my head to this person, they would not respond this way. Yet, despite all the evidence to the contrary, I think that this is a gift of mine: anticipating how someone will react.
4. Falling in love requires two people. He cannot fall in love with her if she is not falling in love with him. But so frequently it happens at such different speeds for the two people that nothing ever matches up. And sometimes you’re lucky and you fall at similar speeds for a period of time. But then that ends, and you’re falling at different speeds and things begin to hurt, and they hurt even more because you remember when the person was really there right next to you and not just there next to you and you begin to hold that against them, and it can manifest itself in so many ways but the best thing, the best possible thing, is to just get away from that person, and no one wants to do that, even if everyone does. And that seems to be the long and short of most stories, but here I am and here you are and here is just about everybody.
5. So hey, let’s not get close to anyone for a while.
6. This body pillow is lousy company.
7. It wasn’t until I stepped into Glascott’s that I understood the powerful connection between smell and memory. Glascott’s walls are repellent. The cheap wood and tile floors have collected grime and mold and it penetrates. Dublin pub floors and walls of quality wood had seen much more than these, and they were inviting, another character welcoming you to enjoy the evening. I miss the warm embrace of foreign tongues surrounding me.
8. I know I need to write. I have a terrible need to write. I know that is what is really truly keeping me awake. But instead of actually writing, I’m writing this list. And I hope it shuts my mind up, shuts it up just long enough so that I can sleep. And if she doesn’t call tomorrow and it’s just me and me during the day, I promise I will write. I will write for hours. But if she calls, and she says she’ll be here, I’ll be happier. I’ll be happier because I will do what I may approximate in writing. I will say what I might write for a character. Because right now, that’s all I think I am as a writer. At this moment, the best my writing will be is all the things I wish I could do for myself but don’t have the stomach for. And I think that is what is keeping me awake right now. All that’s above is just a symptom of that disease which I have let fester and grow inside me over the last 10 months—or more, or less. And everyone has cowardice and bravery inside themselves, and I know when I’m being a coward, but I can never recall when I’ve ever been brave.

August 2011

1. My skin itches. Psoriasis. Eczema. It doesn’t matter. It’s mild and when it’s mild they’re both treated the same. That’s what Dr. Fine said. I got an Rx for an ointment from her that I used for the first time today. “The skin is thicker on the hands, so it’s okay that this is stronger. You’ll be able to use it on your arms, too.”
2. Renee makes a noise when she hears, feels or sees me itching. She puts a hand up. Not enough to stop me, just enough that I know she knows. And I typically stop.
3. It’s hot under the covers. Our bodies can’t help but be close. She runs cold and I run hot. Or maybe it’s the other way around. I’ve wondered about that since I started sharing my bed. I free limbs from the covers and they cool off and then get cold but the warmth in my core never goes away and I should be so lucky I am so lucky.
4. Twenty-six is a stone’s throw away. It doesn’t seem like an important one, but it is proving otherwise. Health insurance under my mom runs out. It will continue on under GRG, almost nothing changing. Except now it’s out of my paycheck. The paycheck I hardly see hit numbers like $50. The paycheck that I forget to pick up time and again, that managers come by with saying, “I found this in the safe for you.” The paycheck that says you make your money off the people that sit in our restaurant. You’re lucky we don’t charge you. You’re welcome.
5. I’m tired. I’ve been up eighteen hours. But I haven’t used the majority of them. And that’s a trend. And that’s a problem
6. East of Eden and Freedom and Plainsong and even City of Thieves. But I do think I’m about done with “Seeing Blue Hues.” Yes. Five years later, I’d say it’s pretty well put to bed.
7. The building’s front door and its loose glass panes and hard slam. The neighbors upstairs have had a gathering. It’s been respectful, but it’s so out of the usual that it grabs my attention. And it reminds me of the Thursdays (and Tuesdays, Wednesdays...) that I was gathering people in to my rented space. Nights that didn’t hold mornings at their end. Nights that embraced laughter, madness, and forgetfulness.
8. Strip away the artifice. Write as the writer. Stop hiding away; stepping behind a young sapling that hides you no more than paint does molding drywall. The nightstand is your nightstand and you want to write about it so just write about it. Just write.
9. Her dreams, just the pieces that come through in mumbled bits of sleeptalk, have more life to them than yours. She says they are about you and you believe her and you don’t dream about her enough. Your dreams are tedious and wearisome. Your dreams are your creativity and you are lacking at the moment. Do you remember what creativity really feels like?