Nightswimming

Whenever I feel piqued or sad about my life, I've been thinking about a quote I ran across in John Barth's short story "Night-Sea Journey":

Indeed, if I have yet to join the hosts of the suicides, it is because (fatigue apart) I find it no meaningfuller to drown myself than to go on swimming.

Uplifting, eh?

For me, it means in a greater sense that in order for me to live a meaningful life, I have to create my own meaning and not depend on what I think is some innate universal order.

For instance, I could not get to sleep last night. Although I have been struggling with insomnia for the greater part of two years, I had been doing better until last night. I was plagued with the urge to tell someone off. I have wanted to tell this person off for awhile, but the sane part of me has always maintained the futily of it, being as the person involved has as much of a right to make their own decisions (however hurtful) as I. But why, why do I care about what is "right" in the situation? Maybe I would stop thinking about telling this person off if I actually just did it, right?

I probably won't feel any better. It won't make me look any better, that's for sure. Yet why do I care? Why is the "greater meaning" of a meaningless life more important than what I deem important?

Therefore, fuck you, you turd. Fuck you, you fuckin' fuck. Eat shit. You don't know anything about me.

(Repeat twenty times.)


I dreamt that I was cleaning some things out of my dead grandmother's basement. My grandfather was moving and he had a lot of our "stuff" in the basement (childhood memories). I was very happy to have this dream, to fully go in and sort through the memories I feel were locked away when my grandfather did sell their house several years ago. I took a bunch of bicycles (you can never have too many), a bunch of adolescent books and yearbooks from my younger days, and a couple of my cousin's college textbooks. I was fascinated that my friend's house across the way (The Simmons') was deserted and creepy, a once-majestic Victorian of the Edward Hopper/mental hospital variety with slightly mirrored windows, a whole porch of them. I wanted to buy the house and get to know its ghosts. I saw a little girl in one of the windows beckoning me to come explore. Then I got totally freaked out and told myself not to think of the house or its ghosts or I'd be inviting them to haunt me.

And I think that's good advice: no matter how enticing the past seems, don't dwell on it. It will imprison you and scare you.

Hmm, I guess I take back all that telling off. Better to leave you in the past, I suppose. Back to swimming, eh?