ManicDDaily

1. People, even husbands (who, for the moment, have to live somewhere else because of their work) really don’t like being called at 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning.

2. Writing is an inherently lonely activity. Living can be also.

3. Reading a new book, a great book, can make the mind gleeful for solitude.  It allows one to range deep into the night with no turning off of lights.  The glee can sour though as hours pass and the too-many-pages-turned hangover closes in.

Reading a book one has read many times before sometimes works better–sleep can be attained at a more reasonable hour–the book can be picked up at almost any random, much rumpled, page, the best parts can be quickly found and re-savored.  But at a certain repeated read–say, the twentieth–the mind begins to slip again into its neediness.  This happens, in part, to me , because the books I choose to read again and again are often not books I consider great, or even good  (those books are sometimes too disturbing to bear repeated reads)  but are soothing, stereotype-affirming, not too challenging experiences.  They are a bit like the nice hot bath I’ve taken so many days of my life, that true attention is not required.   I don’t worry about slipping, just check the water’s temperature, then step in, lie back and relax (usually with a much read book in hand.)

But even the most comfortable bath eventually feels tepid.

4. There are many thoughts, such as those about Robert Pattinson and also about some of those same mindless books  (silly teen novels) that I’d just as soon not email to my friends, but somehow don’t mind shouting out into the void. (What seems like the void.)

5. You can always edit, delete a blog, even after it’s been published;  it’s one of those rare vehicles in which words can be taken back; the shouts reeled in.  The tongue doesn’t even need to bitten.  You can simply click, click, click.

—ManicD, in a less than manic moment, but feeling better already.