9 November 2012 2 a.m.

I’ve semislept for an hour or so to the stammering drone of the Carl Sandburg documentary poorly relayed via the iPhone’s PBS app, which starts and stops, rebuffers and reverts to audio, and restarts restarts restarts until when it finally halts altogether only 20 minutes of the program has been got through after an hour of trying. I wake all the way up then and kill the app and roll over to find catGreta moved close to my body in her sleep. I extend an arm and she chirrups extending her own alongside it, claws gently grasping at the tips of my fingers in her contentment. But I can’t get comfortable and finally I realize the light through the long high uncovered window above us is uncharacteristically bright, even for the damned orange street lamp that will invade. Could it only be the new snow reflecting? I climb to my knees and blink out through the glass. And it dawns on me that I’ve left the rear porch light on, cruel into the back neighbors’ windows, surely. And wearily I pull my heavy body on its swelled bones to my feet and around the bed to the bathroom to relieve my bladder and then around and down the narrow hallway to the back door to flip the switch and give darkness its due. Back in bed I hunt for something to write with lest I forget an inspiration dawning in my restless mind, but I find no pen, no paper at hand. I won’t be angry with myself this time. I have come to accept that this just happens, however many pens and spiral journals I stockpile around myself: when the time comes that I need them, none will be at hand. I return to the living room and my desk there, find nothing in the dim light. On with the floor lamp and even on my desk find no writing pen, only felt-tip Pilots that will not serve. At last I locate a flowerpot that holds three gel pens of a type I favored three years ago, and I grab them all, and a journal notebook, and return to bed. The first two of the three pens are dry and I toss them to the floor in disgust. Thankfully though the last pen will write and here I form these words.

The inspiration is this—a memory of my forgotten project, the need to return to those semitrance states that gave access to my childhood as I lived it, to return and remember on the page the magic of it before I drown in misperceptions inflicted by a new comprehension of my inborn maladapted neurology. I want to remember innocent. What was the memory, exactly, that caused my start just now? It was so sweet and green. The animals sleep here oblivious to my wakefulness. Greta curled now tightly in to herself. Ted and Piffle, Apple and Lobsang occupying the bed’s lower two-thirds. Obese Ted’s asthmatic wheezing like a concertina rhythm every night all night. I hope I can remember to give him acidophilus. What was it? The memory is gone, now. After all that, the impulse fades, the certainty and the handful of perfect words propelling - all sunk into oblivion.

Regardless, I must write this thing and not forget. I won’t start tomorrow—I’ll be up all night, now, and too sleepy. Then errands and Skip’s flu shot tomorrow, and Deaven will sleep over tomorrow night, so I’ll have him to feed and entertain. Saturday, then—if I have slept tomorrow night.

Where are my pages? Where have I put them?