too much faulkner
march 22nd, 2000

she'd been reading too much faulkner tonight. her words reeked of it, even 
though she'd only finished the first half of the novel before looking up 
the cliff notes on the internet. it was only a matter of waiting for her 
daughter to fall asleep, now, and then she might be able to cram a few 
hours in before class. she was totally exhausted. she had skipped school 
the morning before to try to catch up with her much-needed sleep, and she 
glances at her daughter across the room with her paws in everything (she's 
particularly fascinating with the stereo speaker) and wonders how come she 
doesn't even need as much sleep as herself, being twenty years younger. it 
don't make no sense.

still no letter from eric. she checks the weather forecast, but no sooner 
has she read it and closed the window than she's already forgotten what it 
says, and the starfish is relentless. she fights sleep as a worthy foe, 
but she always gets fussy this time of night, hitting notes shatter a sane 
person's spine and still refusing to close her eyes.

she sticks a bottle in her mouth to try to quiet her, and runs a quick 
check on all her bookmarked diaries. Dust with his schedule of insanity, 
Meghan's discoveries within dreamscape, badkitty's really cool shoes and 
front 242 discoveries, and then the starfish is asleep, right in the 
middle of John Galt's advertisement. it's much like watching television, 
when she thinks about it, except more meaningful - these people are real. 
"how can you be sure?" she asks herself. and she grabs the torqouise 
bottle to place it back within the kitchen.

"why am i so totally lazy anymore?" she asks herself. "why am i so totally 
out of focus?" it's the first time in her life she's ever had more fun in 
a foreign language class than in literature, which compliments her english 
major...but she just can't get into it. even kafka doesn't excite her the 
way it should. (she can only think about that episode of northern exposure 
when kafka was in old sicily, alaska, the one with the lesbian couple who 
founded the town, the one that always makes her think of angela.) and 
faulkner's detachments and rambling insanity only confuse her, when at any 
other time she would feel inspired.

only a few more weeks. she finds comfort in that. she has absolutely no 
idea where she is going and how she will get there, but she'll be throwing 
the shackles of community college off of her soon, either way, and she 
won't be going back. insane to try to take classes after being so 
accustomed to university work. insane...isn't that it? yes, that's always 
it. devon, you know you're fucking insane.

she's so tired. she gets a drink of water, looks over her shoulder, checks 
her email, and decides to go find sleep herself. it has to be there, 
somewhere, buried underneath all those covers. and if she doesn't find it 
quick, her daughter will forget how again.

* * *


so much for sleep. the starfish was playing possum. it was just a catnap, 
but it's okay. devon seems to be suffering from insomnia anyway. she does 
it a lot. too many images and voices and thoughts running in a carousel 
around her mind, too many things she doesn't have time in the day to work 
out, too many things left undone, untouched. projects wither and die. her 
to-do list has grown mold. she's just run out of motivation. maybe she's 
just tired.

she flips through the remainder of her dog-earred diaries. malice is 
telling her about the stupid laws still on the books in baltimore. (it's 
raining in baltimore, baby, but everything else is the same...) becca is 
showing her photographs. so many people are gone or going or just coming 
back. it's spring break season. the starfish is asleep again, but she'll 
give her a few minutes just to make sure.

the third person becomes her tonight. it places a distance between herself 
and her is and lets her look at her life objectively. thank you, faulkner. 
perhaps she'll keep it? she looks at herself throught he microscope/the 
telescope/the periscope and all she can see is that, tonight, she isn't 
happy. maybe it's just because she's tired. that's probably it. not enough 
sleep to keep this pile o' bones moving. one of her mother's friends told 
her that the reason adolescents were always so depressed anymore was 
simply because their life was boring, and they mistook boredom for 
depression. devon ponders this, but she is no longer an adolescent, as 
much as she may like to think she still is, and her life is far from 
boring, though she often wish it were. it's just because she's tired. and 
because she doesn't want to go to school anymore.

there is sleep, somewhere. she supposes she'll go try to find it again.