I have had this problem sleeping recently where I will get in bed at 2:30, toss and roil in a state of either extreme disorientation or sleep until 4:30, look at my watch, panic and try to remember whether I had been sleeping or just disoriented, and then try to ignore the feeling that my rapid heartbeat is shaking the entire bed. If I don't sleep with earplugs, then the sound of Boo's toenails clicking against the wall as he twitches in his sleep will keep me away; if I wear earplugs, my pulse feels like a timpano. I've introduced a whole slew of chemicals into my bloodstream recently, what with the typhoid medication and the Larium, so maybe that explains it. Larium is supposed to make you hallucinate, but it's not that extreme for me, although I will apparently spend hours half awake in bed thinking of elaborate plots to action/adventure movies starring Leonardo DiCaprio when I am melfloquine-addled and tired.
I can't keep my eyes open. I'm leaving for Vietnam tomorrow, so I probably won't write again until August 6, when I or my body is supposed to return to San Francisco. I have guarded myself against the pestilences of the old world and will be taking a trip to Goodwill today to find fashions inspired by the Google Image search for "typical Vietnamese woman," and I have a little backpack filled with chlorine tabs and secret stashes of American dollars. I bought Paradise of the Blind, a Vietnamese book banned in Vietnam, at my favorite used bookstore three weeks ago but haven't bothered to open it yet, and I worried while packing it that bringing a banned book into a Communist country would win me a lifetime sentence in a rat-packed cell - so instead of not packing it, I spent about ten minutes cutting the author's name and the title of the book off the top of each of the 239 pages, and figured I could read the book on the flight to Taiwan and dump it at Taoyuan airport, or just rip off the cover pages and spine if I have to bring it into Vietnam. Is this stupid?
I feel stupid and unable to move my sluggy arms. I want very much to place silver dollars on my eyelids and feel the steel crenellations of Lady Liberty's hair, curling around her lantern jaw, by the pressure on my eyelashes alone. 
I can tell her she's the only one for me and she can whisper kaddish and eventually we will together be e pluribus unum.
I'm losing it!
No comments:
Post a Comment