She might have asked him, but her job these days, it seemed, was just to hold her tongue, keep it sharpened and ready but withheld in a sheath of silence.

Thomas Pynchon, Vineland

“Have you eaten today?”

11:55 am (every morning, once)

Letter to Anna from 20X1, August [X1]

Subject: It is the form that counts, but the collected thoughts from trains do come with … issues.

Anna

So … obviously the last train I was on, had [unadvertised] railworks, overheating (leading to the staff walking out (or is it walking off—one does not simply walk out of trains?)), a bus replacement service, which was itself replaced by another train, from the same platform, with the exact same staff as before—don’t ask me how that worked, but it was someone’s grand plan to leave one lot stranded at a station during the kind of weather which seems intent on breaking everything.

I’d love to say I got loads done, but … I smidgeoned and cobbled, in a variety of different places. A couple of ideas formed (briefly), a couple just flopped and died before my eyes, and some before the pencil dried; it simply wasn’t 2B, so what can I say?

Sleep deprives us of many things: sleep deprivation; but our sanities!

There is a continuum to the solutions (so I’m told), and a list (there’s always a fucking list): bullets compiled by the sleepwise gluttons, with their hints and nods, suggesting all manner of deliberate cures, and the not so—which is an altogether more deliberate form of fffffffft.

I believe, with some conviction that: almost nothing works [most of the time], absolutely nothing works [more than you think], and sometimes something works, just the once (but it’s usually an accident); and when it does, [because] no one’s around to remind us of quite WTF happened (including but not limited to: the precise order of events, and in what order, which allow you [to, you know] —and there is a permission of sorts involved here … I’m convinced—means that, that one fucking sleep—a unicorn of sorts—is just another unjust fucking stick to bash us with.

Edit: I did compile and squeeze what little I could manage from the notes I chose—some more eligible than others—style over content is one thing when it comes to penmanship—but it would be nice to be both pretty and comprehensible (aesthetically speaking) but, I suppose there’s an artistry in and of itself contained in something so pretty, it becomes indecipherable … just like you.¹

I assure you that, whatever ado will do for you … no. I include the babble you find so sweet. Perhaps it could be a useful aid to sleeps (answers to the usual place and platform, please).

There’s Always Something To Say About Trains.

I imagine you, as I am (or be—we see [all too well] don’t we) early enough to pretend it’s late—late enough to imagine you, is are we.

Still tired—if it’s the food (or not enough), or drink (or not enough?) just don’t pretend it’s that other thing; it’s always a ‘might’ could: have you noticed them everywhere?

So […] I are where I’d expect you’d expect me to be, with some minor changes—nothing drastic, plaid for instance instead of that 5% elastane (never 7 or 13 or some other forsaken numeral which needs to be excised from televisions, yes that again (which I find awfully suspicious (though the LEVI T’s make it work with plums quite perfectly))), in bed, with a book, no, not one from the piles, not any of them, but one of those other books.

It complicates—I are reader first, but see you there, and where I imagine you to be, imagining yourself, book in palm, fighting sleep, wondering, I wonder what …

But […] it’s not too complicated—it’s a word we substitute with nillies to do the heavy lifting of some vague ‘maybe’ response, where such sentiments don’t quite fit. In fact, it’s never really complicated at all, more—I’m not going to like how this sounds out loud or spelled out any less than I do by the time I’d reached page 39, then [when I] reached for [OBJECT REDACTED].

By 145 the turmoil [had] eased, my imagining of what you were, how, and is—at that time eased also—as the complications had both matured and settled.

Would it be easy to use actual words, about the words I’d just eaten?

Oh, fuck no—but that’s a point.

I wonder if you are sleeping better, or if not, waking better, what texts are on your menu, whether your glasses sleep with you or near you.

One day, I’ll let you know what I thought … about [REDACTED], what I think about while trying to think about reading, while reading and then you’ll reasonably request to know, everything.

About, everything.

Because […] of course you will, quite reasonably.

But where do we start?

—JustD

PS. [REDACTED]

1. merely the irresistible allure of the solitary footnote ↩︎

Vivian Maier, self portrait, 1955