you know what that’s like? its like closing up the Eggars storybook and feeling vaguely disappointed that the long one you read first didn’t include any steamy midnight scenes on the beach (even after reading patiently through ten pages of buildup) and then turning off the lamp and remembering that the one you liked, the one you just stopped reading halfway through had had a TV in it that wouldn't turn off and you realize that he was using it as a thematic device to indicate something-o-rather and wasn’t he clever for doing that, but not so clever that you’ll keep reading so you turn off the light and close your eyes five minutes later you snap awake thinking that maybe the TV was telling a story entirely on its own and wouldn’t two stories be better than one and what if they complimented each other to create a third story and what if that third story – the one that was never really told – was really the nerve center behind the whole thing. you consider that the unsaid is very often just that. this is getting good you think, and then it all seems very obvious and perhaps Eggars is even cleverer than you thought, but maybe not because that might just be something ELSE that you missed in third grade english and you wish you had a fucking clue when it came to how your own language works. or its like flipping through the big book of Jean prints and reaching the last page that features the girl with tiny chinese shoes sitting in front of a mirror. The one where her head has exploded in to this grotesque orgy of color, as though eagle sized butterfly wings have been ripped off and stuffed in to some girl’s neck and you notice for the first time that there’s a kid in the window behind her and then you notice that his head is shaped like a penis – and for a moment the shoes and the mirror and the penis and the orgy all fit together exactly the way they’re supposed to and even though you can’t swallow that thought whole, you can see it speeding by like the reflection of someone beautiful in the rearview mirror that was probably just a trick of the light but maybe it wasn’t and fuck, should you go back and check? and its like lying in bed in the dark feeling small and chilly and directionless, trying to place yourself in a world that features people like this, and you figure they must have different eyes, Eggars and Jean, special glasses maybe, to capture such much and convey it using so little. and you wonder at such elegant little spaces they have carved from thin air with their magical ice cream scoops to serve up this one, blissful pre-sleep jolt of consciousness.

Comments

Carla
Cerulean is the best crayon, try that one. (look what I found: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Crayola_crayon_colors )

I went to Russia with you
If I think about other peoples' genius too much, I get depressed and can't sleep. Might I suggest coming up with clever schemes to make the rest of the world think YOU are a genius? Right before you fall asleep they all will seem like brilliant ideas...

Nate
Carla: I think the problem is when the inside and the outside get mixed and freeze my pen, mid thought, above the page. I've never tried meditation, but then I don't sleep all that much either... Crayons perhaps!

Carla
Times like these I wonder how I ever sleep. And understand why meditation skills are so important. Talent of clearing ones head at the only time each day where everything is still enough to concentrate inside instead of out. The brain is a web, thoughts always leading and leading. Endless really. Without a journal with an end to each entry, I would get a lot less sleep. You?

Nate
MBL : Actually, the reason I called you was to tell you about the DFW obit. that I had just read, but midway through our little chat I decided it was just too grim. M: No. erm, Maybe? Not sure about the yes...

m.
yes.

MBL
...and then you call your sister to tell her all about it, but in the process forget that that was your purpose in calling her, and instead spend a few minutes blundering to her about how you'd just been asleep, but not actually asleep, how you'd just reached for your phone to check the time, but you knew the time, how you were just about to set an alarm on your phone, but you get up early anyway... i think you have special glasses too. you just lose them sometimes. in any case, i very much appreciate rambling late-night phone calls. Keep 'em comin'.