Diurnal patterns

One of my favorite bloggers (www.dietgirl.org) has a cardinal rule for blogging that goes something like "don't blog after midnight." This is a pretty wise guideline, because it's those murky hours of the AM where people are most likely to write stuff that is unchecked, uncensored, unpolished, and quite possibly incomprehensible and unintelligent. Yet, somehow, it's only during these dangerous hours that I find myself making room in bed for my laptop and writing. I think, in fact, that throughout my life, most of my writing has happened late at night. And so I find myself again, here in my bed, at 3AM doing the same.

Why am I not sleeping? I will regret this tomorrow, perhaps, like waking up from a hangover and thinking, really? Was that worth it? Fine, so I have this little bad habit of blogging. But can't I pick a nice normal time to sit down and write something? My *true* writer friends, like Ester, seem to manage it fine.

It's like writing is an accident for me that happens when I'm no longer completely in possession of my faculties. When my guard is down, my decision making impaired, my mind relaxed into a state of semi-delirium, semi-consciousness. Half dreaming. Really just like dreams, which always seem so true and so immediate at that moment. And then a few hours into the next day, secured in the world of reality and self-consciousness, those thoughts suddenly look... ridiculous. And you are left thinking, but Brad Pitt never went to my high school.

Maybe I can only manage to write at night, but by daylight, recently, I've been thinking a lot about stories. This is in part, because, I've been thinking a lot about my friend Yoni. Yoni aside from being a critically acclaimed film maker and photographer, is also one of the greatest storytellers I've ever met in my life. I fell in love with Yoni a little bit while hearing him tell stories somewhere in between Eastern Europe and the Middle East. I did, and so did a group of my closest girlfriends, including Naomi who's been attached to him ever since.

They were performances, his stories. Sometimes with guest appearances by various other characters from my high school class, most notably by a kid named Michael, better known as Gertie. Yoni always narrator and Gertie playing Itzi, Yoni's dad. Itzi was the favorite subject. It got to the point where they had developed a repertoire. A repertoire and a loyal audience. Sometimes a dozen of us would just sit around and listen for hours. Piping up every once in a while to make requests. Tell us the one about your dad doing CPR on the parakeet.

In reality, I've had very little personal contact with Itzi, but I feel like I know him better than most of my friend's parents. And from what I know of him, like his son, he's a storyteller and a performer. Which is why I'm pained at the thought of him recovering from surgery in a state where he's limited to communication with a white board and a dry erase marker. In time, I imagine, being a man of his intelligence, creativity, and stubborn determination, he'll find a way to texture his communication to the same extent as he did with voice. Instead of an inability to pronounce "th," maybe the Isreali accent will come out in an unorthodox grammar pattern, the spirited flourish of a hand, or an impatient gesture of a thumb pressed against the first two fingers. This is what I imagine.

One of the first signs for me that I had met someone compatible in Mike, was the collection of Brother Grimm's that he had on the bookshelf of his bedroom to match my own. His book looking, in a remarkably fitting way, like the masculine version of mine -- with a simple title on the cover and not a flourishy detailed picture of Sleeping Beauty being kissed by her prince set in requisite pastels. He venerated the bedtime story as much as I did. This was a serious parameter for me, one that I would have liked to check off in the religion section on Jdate next to "sometimes goes to synagogue."

For years, Yael, Dani, and I would follow this ritual. Feign sleep after the lights were out, listen carefully to the sound of adult footsteps settling into the family room and then the click of the TV and the muffled sounds of CNN. Yael and I would be lying in bed, waiting. And then finally a tiny creak of the floorboards and a growing triangle of light on our carpet as our door opened slowly. Dani would climb onto the edge of one of our beds and in whispers we'd build elaborate stories, sometimes with hand shadows against the rainbow wallpaper. I hardly remember any of them now. Only some of the characters. Dani's are the easiest to remember, because he had two recurring ones: the tomato bug and the potato bug. Even several years after Dani stopped sneaking into our room, Yael would still pester me late into the night to tell her a story. And soon I got lazy and less creative and started stories like "once upon a time there was a girl who asked her sister to tell her a story, so her sister did and then they went to sleep."

So maybe this is the reason for my warewolf-style writing, only rearing its (ugly?) head after midnight. And now it appears I've come full circle. And it's high time for this girl to turn in and realize that this entry should come to

The End.